Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on February 1, 2004 3:06 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Pentium 4 has come a long way since its introduction in the Fall of 2000. It went from being a laughable performer, to a CPU embraced by the community. Today Intel is extending the Pentium 4 family with the third major revision of the chip – codenamed Prescott.
Back when Prescott was nothing more than a curious block on Intel’s roadmap, we assumed that history would repeat itself: Intel would move to a smaller, 90nm process, double the cache and increase clock speeds. Intel has always historically behaved this way, they did so with the Pentium III and its iterations, and they did so with the first revisions of the Pentium 4. What we got with Prescott was much more than we bargained for.
Intel did move to a 90nm process, but at the same time didn’t produce a vastly cooler chip. Intel did double the cache, but also increased access latencies – a side effect we did not have with Northwood. Intel also moved to Prescott in order to increase clock speeds, however none of those speeds are available at launch (we’re still no faster than Northwood at 3.2GHz) and Intel did so at the expense of lengthening the pipeline; the Prescott’s basic Integer pipeline is now 31 stages long, up from the already lengthy 20 stages of Northwood. With Prescott, many more changes were made under the hood, including new instructions, some technology borrowed from the Pentium M and a number of algorithmic changes that affect how the CPU works internally.
If you thought that Prescott was just going to be smaller, faster, better – well, you were wrong. But at the same time, if you view it as longer, slower, worse – you’re not exactly on target either. Intel has deposited a nice mixed bag of technology on our doorsteps today, and it’s going to take a lot to figure out which side is up.
Let’s get to it.
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Stlr22 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
post*Stlr22 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
KristopherKubickiEarlier you said that I should read the article.
What was your point? What was it about my first pot that you disagreed with?
KristopherKubicki - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
#7:I agree 100% with Anand and Derek. This processor will be a non-event until we get in the 3.6GHz range. Similar to Northwood's launch.
#10:
Check out our price engine. We have already been listing the processor a week!
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/priceguide.htm
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant....
cliffa3 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
In the table on page 14 it shows that the 90nm P4@2.8 will have a 533 MHz FSB, but is that the case? I did some quick google research and can't find anything to support that...please confirm or correct, thanks.NFactor - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Yes, I must agree this is an amazing article, one of the best i have ever read. Thanks.Xentropy - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
VERY interesting article. Thank you Anand and Derek! One of the best I've read on Anandtech, and I consider yours the best hardware site on the net!One correction, on page 7, you say, "if you want to multiply a number in binary by 2 you can simply shift the bits of the number to the right by 1 bit," but don't you mean shift to the left one bit (and place a zero at the end)? It's much like multiplying a decimal number by ten for obvious reasons.
Anyway, it looks like the Prescott is somewhat of a non-event at this time. Just new cores that perform fundamentally the same as the current ones at current speeds. The real news will come later; Intel has just positioned itself for one hell of a speed ramp to come. Northwood was clearly at the end of the line. One analogy, I suppose, would be that Intel didn't fire any shots in the CPU war today, but they loaded their guns in preparation to fire.
The coming year will be an exciting one for us hardware geeks. I'm interested in seeing how higher clocked Prescotts play out as well as whether anything 64-bit shows up before 2005 to support AMD's stance that we need it NOW.
Again, thanks for a very thorough article!
Stlr22 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
KristopherKubickiSo what's your take on these new Prescotts?
KristopherKubicki - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Anand scolded me for not reading the article :( I only read the conclusion and the graphs. Turns out the decision making isnt as clearcut as it sounds.As for the thing with the inquirer. Well, lots of people had prescotts. We had one back in August I believe. The thing is they were horribly slow - 533FSB 2.8GHz. Everyone drew the conclusion that these were purposely slowed processors that were jsut for engineering purposes. While the inq benched this processor, most people didnt just becuase they were under the impression this was not to be the final production model. Hope that clears up some discrepancy about the validity.
Cheers,
Kristopher
wicktron - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Hehe, I guess the Inq was right about this one. Where are all the Inq bashers and their claim of "fake" benchies? Haha, I laugh.Stlr22 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
KristopherKubicki - "read the article..."lol that might be a good idea, as I only broswed it and read the conclusion. :D