What are the major differences between Prescott and other CPUs

[GZFant]

What are going to be the major differences between the Prescott and the Northwood? I am planning on upgrading next year probably around April or so and I am really curious right now what is in store for the spring. Is the Prescott core going to be the Pentium 5 or is that saved for a couple of years? Anyone think the Prescott is going to give the Athlon64 a run for its money?

 

[Accord99]

Likely Prescott improvements over Northwood:
-larger L1 data cache, 8KB->16KB
-larger trace cache, 12K muOps ->16K muOps
-faster trace cache, 6 muOps/2 cycles -> 4 muOps/cycle
-large L2 cache, 512KB->1024KB
-faster integer multiply
-SSE3, with additional instructions for more effective vector operations and Hyperthreading
-possibly additional execution resources

Given the competiveness of the P4 versus the A64, I don't expect Prescott will have any problems match the A64. Matching the AFX will depend on several matters, including: when Intel introduces a FSB bump, how successfuly Intel ramps up Prescott's clockspeeds, when can Intel introduce big-cache versions of the Prescott, AMD's introduction of volume 90nm production, etc.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: Accord99
Likely Prescott improvements over Northwood:
-larger L1 data cache, 8KB->16KB
-larger trace cache, 12K muOps ->16K muOps
-faster trace cache, 6 muOps/2 cycles -> 4 muOps/cycle
-large L2 cache, 512KB->1024KB
-faster integer multiply
-SSE3, with additional instructions for more effective vector operations and Hyperthreading
-possibly additional execution resources

Given the competiveness of the P4 versus the A64, I don't expect Prescott will have any problems match the A64. Matching the AFX will depend on several matters, including: when Intel introduces a FSB bump, how successfuly Intel ramps up Prescott's clockspeeds, when can Intel introduce big-cache versions of the Prescott, AMD's introduction of volume 90nm production, etc.

by the time intel sorts out production problems with prescott there will probably be faster and better A64's + 64-bit windows.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: Accord99
Likely Prescott improvements over Northwood:
-larger L1 data cache, 8KB->16KB
-larger trace cache, 12K muOps ->16K muOps
-faster trace cache, 6 muOps/2 cycles -> 4 muOps/cycle
-large L2 cache, 512KB->1024KB
-faster integer multiply
-SSE3, with additional instructions for more effective vector operations and Hyperthreading
-possibly additional execution resources

Given the competiveness of the P4 versus the A64, I don't expect Prescott will have any problems match the A64. Matching the AFX will depend on several matters, including: when Intel introduces a FSB bump, how successfuly Intel ramps up Prescott's clockspeeds, when can Intel introduce big-cache versions of the Prescott, AMD's introduction of volume 90nm production, etc.

by the time intel sorts out production problems with prescott there will probably be faster and better A64's + 64-bit windows.

 

[mikeg]

Prescotts are reportedly 10% faster at the same clock speed than current P4s.

 

[poisondeathray]

i'm also looking to upgrade and have been looking around
prescott is rumored to have 64 bit instructions as well ?
the higher end motherboard support changes might be significant:

1) pci express x16 - the new interface for the high end graphics cards; im not even sure if ati or nvidia will come out with a new product cycle in time

2) ddr2 pc4300 support (533mhz) - im not sure if this is good or bad... ive read that the bandwidth is greater for ddr2 but the latency is slower?

3)ICH6R - SATA RAID support for 4 drives?

 

[VIAN]

Intel's L1 cache is that small.

 

[FluxCap]

Not that these new numbers/features doesn't impress me but I am glad I decided to upgrade now. I bought a P4P800 Deluxe, 3.0C and 1 gig of Corsair yesterday. It should last me a while and I should have comparable performance to the new boards.

 

[VIAN]

Its temperature.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: HurleyBird

Originally posted by: Accord99
Likely Prescott improvements over Northwood:
-larger L1 data cache, 8KB->16KB
-larger trace cache, 12K muOps ->16K muOps
-faster trace cache, 6 muOps/2 cycles -> 4 muOps/cycle
-large L2 cache, 512KB->1024KB
-faster integer multiply
-SSE3, with additional instructions for more effective vector operations and Hyperthreading
-possibly additional execution resources

Given the competiveness of the P4 versus the A64, I don't expect Prescott will have any problems match the A64. Matching the AFX will depend on several matters, including: when Intel introduces a FSB bump, how successfuly Intel ramps up Prescott's clockspeeds, when can Intel introduce big-cache versions of the Prescott, AMD's introduction of volume 90nm production, etc.

by the time intel sorts out production problems with prescott there will probably be faster and better A64's + 64-bit windows.

So you are expecting MICROSOFT and AMD to be on time. Nice.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Yes and also:

-Enhanced branch prediction and prefetch(data prefetch?)
-Longer pipeline, but supposedly very little loss of performance since Prescott isn't a complete instruction overhaul just addition of pipelines in the individual units(ALU, FPU?) and ~25 stages.

Performance figures for the preliminary chips are 10% over Northwood but I wouldn't be suprised if its 10% over EE or more. In the Inquirer(or register) article it claims that Intel said Prescott won't go over 100W in its whole life so I expect Intel would try to stay within that limit. That's good because it means Prescott may be compatible with current 865/875 chipsets after all.

And I believe the heat is because more units are active at one time than Northwood HT does.