Pentium 4 Review

[GopherMobile]

Will the Palomino have a 256 bit path to the L2 cache instead of the Thunderbird/Athlon's 64 bit?

 

[RagingGuardian]

I do agree that they'll make more enhancements to the core but apart from a better BPU more L2 cache, and a 256bit pathway to L2 cache I don't see much else they can do for the core to squeeze more performance. I do hope they add more stuff like a thermal diode and a few nifty features but I really don't think the Palomino will be all that.

I hope that they just prove me wrong with some awesome performance but I'm not expecting much. I do think that the Palomino will eat the P4s food though no matter what happens.

 

[ModemMix]

looks pretty interesting i cant wait to see what anand has to say. Im looking forward to seeing what that chip can do with optimization. The reported memory preformace is INSANE! maybe rambus will just not go away and die afterall...damn teh luck.


ModemMix

 

[Dulanic]

They will be adding a Thermal Diode... they have said they will on T-birds also very soon. And Raging there is ALOT more to a CPU than the BPU and cache.... There are tons of things they can do that 99.9% of us have no clue what any of it is.

 

[Hulk]

Wow, big suprise.

P4 ABSOLUTELY SUCKS!!!

 

[MulLa]

What's this business about requiring a new case to secure the heatsink too?!! Hope we don't need that for the new Northwood P4s

 

[Pyro]

I dont mean to disapoint anyone, but this summer I read that the mustang core will still feature a 64bit pathway. I really hope that I'm wrong, because unless they double or quad pump it, it will just suck.

also, I think that integrating a heat spreader (like on the p4) is a good idea. Increases the surface area and protects the core...

 

[OneEng]

ModemMix,
I thought the memory performance was pretty amazing too, but don't forget that the numbers are only representative if the application uses large bunches of data with relatively few requests.

In instances where small amounts of information are requested freqently (like a cache miss) the latency of RAMBUS kills the CPU performance.

Programs like Q3, SpecFP2000, and Windows media encoder are all excellent applications for showing off the high bandwith of the P4. Most other programs will show a severe degradation in IPC for the P4.

I can't wait till tommorow. Have to get up early and read all the reviews before I go to work!

 

[Goi]

Hmmn, I thought AMD later upgraded the Athlon's branch predictor from the simple LS one to a G-share algorithm instead? I could be wrong, but I thought I read it somewhere.
Anyway, the new Athlon core(Palomino/etc) will not have more pipelines, rather they will have more pipeline stages - 2 if I remember correctly.