3.2 Prescott vs. 3.2 Northwood at "The INQ"

[daedalus411]

Originally posted by: videoclone
We are all into Computers we all know AMD are better so why do you people still buy Intel ? i dont see how anyone in these forums would still buy intel and now even an overclocked intel CPU to 3.5Ghz + only just keeps up with the Athlon64 in games.

A64's are very nice... however:

A) Not everyone here is into games.

B) a P4 northwood overclocked comes at a pretty nice price.

c) I've built dozens of systems with all different configurations, and an Intel processor with an Intel chipset has alway given me the least problems. Usually they are chipset driver related.

 

[lookin4dlz]

Originally posted by: daedalus411
A64's are very nice... however:

A) Not everyone here is into games.

B) a P4 northwood overclocked comes at a pretty nice price.

c) I've built dozens of systems with all different configurations, and an Intel processor with an Intel chipset has alway given me the least problems. Usually they are chipset driver related.

Pretty much the same reply here - the only game I play is Civ3, I use my computer as a home entertainment center as well and area in which Intel works well, I don't want to spend a ton of money and the last AMD chip I had failed even though it wasn't being overclocked - the two Intel chips have overclocked for years w/o problems.

 

[daedalus411]

thanks for backing me up there

 

[pakotlar]

Originally posted by: lookin4dlz

Originally posted by: daedalus411
A64's are very nice... however:

A) Not everyone here is into games.

B) a P4 northwood overclocked comes at a pretty nice price.

c) I've built dozens of systems with all different configurations, and an Intel processor with an Intel chipset has alway given me the least problems. Usually they are chipset driver related.

Pretty much the same reply here - the only game I play is Civ3, I use my computer as a home entertainment center as well and area in which Intel works well, I don't want to spend a ton of money and the last AMD chip I had failed even though it wasn't being overclocked - the two Intel chips have overclocked for years w/o problems.

I was an amd user from the thunderbird (orig.) 1.4ghz to the axp 2400+. Every single chipset gave me many problems compared to the two intel systems I have owned. They were related to the VIA northbridge. When I switched over to nforce2 problems went away. I think the issue is that AMD no longer produces their own chipsets, leaving few alternatives for the consumer. Unfortunately historically these solutions have been somewhat troublesome for AMD systems. Of course I'm not speaking of VIA and Nvidia's latest offerings, as I've never used them. I will say this. It gives me reasurrence to know that I have a massive company with a good reputation behind my hardware.

 

[ntrights]

Hey guys the poor prescott benchmarks might have to do with the mobo they used not recognizing prescotts L1 cache...so basically Prescott is crippled in those benches. look at Inquires report test rig: "Canterwood 875 Board" why didn't they write the mobo they used

AFAIK it's only Asus that supports Prescott with a bios update as of today (perhaps Gigabyte also?)

 

[INemtsev]

This is all cuz of that long pipe it has....

 

[Hyperfocal]

When will people learn?

Never buy the first release of any new Intel chip.

486 - 20
Pentium 60
PentiumII 233
Celeron 266
P4 1.3

You'll pay top dollar for very little additional performance.

But once they get the bugs worked out, the clock speed up and the new boards optimized for the new chip, they're great.

 

[mamisano]

Originally posted by: INemtsev
This is all cuz of that long pipe it has....

It's not the lenght of the pipe that counts, it's how effeciently it is used

 

[cowdog]

Just a few more days, and we'll have better information. Right now the rumors are flying, which isn't too surprising. What is surprising, however, is that most of rumorville is negative and the Intel marketing machine hasn't turned up the volume and drowned the background noise.

 

[Nyati13]

Originally posted by: pakotlar


I was an amd user from the thunderbird (orig.) 1.4ghz to the axp 2400+. Every single chipset gave me many problems compared to the two intel systems I have owned. They were related to the VIA northbridge. When I switched over to nforce2 problems went away. I think the issue is that AMD no longer produces their own chipsets, leaving few alternatives for the consumer. Unfortunately historically these solutions have been somewhat troublesome for AMD systems. Of course I'm not speaking of VIA and Nvidia's latest offerings, as I've never used them. I will say this. It gives me reasurrence to know that I have a massive company with a good reputation behind my hardware.

With the K7 the quality of the northbridge was a serious factor, with the K8 (with it's integrated memory controller) the northbridge is almost completely gone. On the VIA K8 chipset I'm on right now, the "northbridge" is nothing but an AGP 8X connection on the HyperTransport link to the southbridge.
AMD took the most vulnerable part of the northbridge away from the 3rd party chipset makers, and stuck it right inside the CPU (where it belongs).

Jeremy

 

[HurleyBird]

The next most vulnerable part would probably be the AGP bus, but now that VIA has actually liscensed intel AGP tech it should be fine.

 

[daedalus411]

I personally also like the built in drive controllers on intel chipsets. I've had problems with 3rd party RAID chips and let's not forget the Nvidia IDE driver waiting game.

 

[pakotlar]

cool!

 

[daedalus411]

Originally posted by: pakotlar
cool!

I just meant it as another reason why P4's ain't such a crazy idea

 

[videoclone]

Funny every AMD system ive had has worked fine !!! but i had a friend who had heaps of problems but some people just dont know how to build computers and configure them.

AMD Athlon (T-birt) 800 with VIAKT133 Windows 2k SP2 ... No problems but with windows ME and 98 i did have probs
But thats because those OS's are shit

AMD Athlon XP 1600+ with SIS735 Windows 2k SP3 ... No Problems

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with VIAKT333 Windows 2k SP3 ... No Problems

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Nforce2 Windows XP SP1 ... No Problems

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: ntrights
Hey guys the poor prescott benchmarks might have to do with the mobo they used not recognizing prescotts L1 cache...so basically Prescott is crippled in those benches. look at Inquires report test rig: "Canterwood 875 Board" why didn't they write the mobo they used

AFAIK it's only Asus that supports Prescott with a bios update as of today (perhaps Gigabyte also?)

That's my thinking as well. I just don't believe the boards they're testing on are optimized for the Prescott, or that skt478 is going to do this CPU justice. Like Hyperfocal said

Never buy the first release of any new Intel chip.

486 - 20
Pentium 60
PentiumII 233
Celeron 266
P4 1.3

You'll pay top dollar for very little additional performance.

But once they get the bugs worked out, the clock speed up and the new boards optimized for the new chip, they're great

 

[ntrights]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: ntrights
Hey guys the poor prescott benchmarks might have to do with the mobo they used not recognizing prescotts L1 cache...so basically Prescott is crippled in those benches. look at Inquires report test rig: "Canterwood 875 Board" why didn't they write the mobo they used

AFAIK it's only Asus that supports Prescott with a bios update as of today (perhaps Gigabyte also?)

That's my thinking as well. I just don't believe the boards they're testing on are optimized for the Prescott, or that skt478 is going to do this CPU justice. Like Hyperfocal said

Never buy the first release of any new Intel chip.

486 - 20
Pentium 60
PentiumII 233
Celeron 266
P4 1.3

You'll pay top dollar for very little additional performance.

But once they get the bugs worked out, the clock speed up and the new boards optimized for the new chip, they're great

Agreed, but I still think that If they had used my P4C800E-D Bios1014 then clock for clock Prescott would have been roughly 8-12% faster in most benches over Northwood....(i could be wrong though )

 

[Soulkeeper]

soon as i get one next month or so i'll post a few benchmarks comparing my 1.8ghz p4m to the 2.8ghz prescott while both running at 2.8ghz

this should be interesting, i'm especially interested in seti times and what HT can offer me

this will be fun but i hope the 2.8 will atleast oc to 3.5

 

[SilverBack]

There's an interesting read over at CNet about Intel's Prescott makes multimedia play.

The chip itself is tweaked for multimedia, sporting new instructions for handling video and audio files, a larger 1MB cache, and faster chip speeds that will start around 3.4GHz and go to 4GHz later in the year. Security features designed to thwart attacks will also be enabled with an update of Windows XP coming in the second quarter.

A family of chipset code-named Grantsdale, coming later in the spring, will push the entertainment angle further by adding High Definition Audio and give PCs the ability to act like a wireless access hub for other household devices.

The chip, Intel's first on the 90-nanometer process, will consume close to 90 watts to 100 watts, and around 40 watts while idle due to leakage and inadvertent power consumption, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. Some notebook chips use less than 40 watts maximum.

Technically speaking, the changes to the actual processor are less dramatic. Besides the 13 new instructions, the chip will sport an improved version of HyperThreading, which lets a processor run two tasks simultaneously. Taken together, these features could make it easier to decompress video or run virus scans in the background.

Here is another link about performance Intel's Prescott chip gets rebuilt for speed

Intel has redesigned a key element in an upcoming version of the Pentium 4 processor to allow the chip to hit higher speeds, but analysts say the change may only incrementally improve performance at first.

While the longer pipeline has allowed performance to escalate, the additional speed initially provided marginal benefits at best. The 1.4GHz Pentium 4 that came out at that time didn't provide an advantage over the 1GHz Pentium III with many applications, according to testers, and often underperformed the then state-of-the-art 1.2GHz Athlon, from Advanced Micro Devices, which featured a 15-stage pipeline.

 

[cowdog]

Given the pricing and lack of fanfare, it really seems that Intel is simply positioning themselves rather than introducing the next big thing. When the 775 mobos are out and the full range of under-the-hood Prescott details are clear, I would guess the opinions will make a turn for the better. I think it is premature to dump on the Prescott when even Intel doesn't seem to be claiming anything special.

 

[Geomagick]

I personally think that preview was insulting to my screen. For a start no NDA and therefore no chip, so they could easily have just made these figures up.

Personally I am going to wait for an in depth review from Anand till I make my mind up.

 

[SilverBack]

Well I'll be the test case then.
I'm going to be able to get a 3.2e right as they come out. A friend of mine is an owner of a known computer store. He is going to be able to get me one rather quickly. I have the $400 sitting here right now
It's going in my water rig replacing my 2.4C.
Seeing how I have the 2.4c running at 3.3 I don't see why the 3.2e can't do 4GHz.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: SilverBack
Well I'll be the test case then.
I'm going to be able to get a 3.2e right as they come out. A friend of mine is an owner of a known computer store. He is going to be able to get me one rather quickly. I have the $400 sitting here right now
It's going in my water rig replacing my 2.4C.
Seeing how I have the 2.4c running at 3.3 I don't see why the 3.2e can't do 4GHz.

Looking forward to your comparison of results :beer:

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: SilverBack
Well I'll be the test case then.
I'm going to be able to get a 3.2e right as they come out. A friend of mine is an owner of a known computer store. He is going to be able to get me one rather quickly. I have the $400 sitting here right now
It's going in my water rig replacing my 2.4C.
Seeing how I have the 2.4c running at 3.3 I don't see why the 3.2e can't do 4GHz.

Cool!!! Let us know what test you are going to run.....dapunisehr and I have a host of similar test we run and it would be a good comparison aainst our PCs....

I have testing:

P4 2.4@2.4ghz
P4 2.4@3.0ghz
P4 2.4@3.5ghz
Barton 3200+

Dapunisher has a host as well...look at his benchmark thread....

 

[ntrights]

Prescott Overclocking - First Test Air Cooled