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
Half-Time Summary
At this point we’re done with talking about all of the microarchitectural changes that have gone into Prescott. We know it’s a lot of information so let’s go through a brief rundown of what we’ve learned so far:
- Prescott’s 31 stage pipeline by itself makes the processor significantly slower than Northwood on a clock for clock basis.
- Prescott’s L2 cache, albeit larger than Northwoods, has a higher access latency – also resulting in lower performance for the 90nm chip
- Through improvements in branch predicting, scheduling algorithms and integer execution, Intel has managed to hide a lot of the downsides to extending the pipeline.
- The large L2 cache also helps keep the pipeline full.
- SSE3 instructions will be useful down the road, but the impact given today’s software will be negligible.
- Extending the pipeline to 31 stages will allow Prescott to scale to speeds in the 4 – 5GHz range next year. It will take those speeds to make Prescott a true successor to Northwood.
With that said, let’s look at more of the common areas of discussion about the new chip.
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Chadder007 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
I can't imagine how HOT that sucker will be when up to 5ghz!!!! 150oC??? LOLFor the heat issues alone, im thinking about going AMD in my next rig.
CRAMITPAL - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
Ace's Hardware summed it up well: Prescott is a DOG, or to be exact a HOT DOG ! See the picture in the review of the dog warming it's toes next to the Prescott powered PC. Talk about one sad CPU piece of crap...Here is the FLAME THROWER reality check:
"Currently there is no reason to upgrade to Prescott, as the gaming performance is more or less ok, but many applications report pretty poor results. On top of that, the new Intel CPU gets hot very quickly and requires a well ventilated case. The Athlon 64 3200+ is not always the clear winner in games compared to 3.2 GHz Prescott, but the 3400+ will have little trouble beating the 3.4 GHz Prescott in most benchmarks. Prescott will have to scale incredibly quickly to outperform the Athlon 64, because the latter scales excellently with clockspeed, and we definitely prefer Cool'n'Quiet over Hot'n Prescott! "
As shown this FLAME THROWER don't scale well, especially when it runs 15-20C hotter than an equal speed Northwood. Intel really fugged up this time. Ya gotta love seeing the Satan eat shit and choke! When every hardware review site on the planet, including THG's tells ya Prescott is a piece of crap, then you might as well resign to reality. DENIAL is futile!
Dell will be selling FLAME THROWING PC Heaters to any gullible sheep foolish enough to buy a Prescott. A fool and his money are soon parted !
AnonymouseUser - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
"Ummmm yea, kinda reminds me of cooking an egg on an Athlon XP"Yeah, kinda, except the Prescott can do the same work in about half the time. Sounds like something they should advertise that as a feature...
Stlr22 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
What happened to CRAM's post???INTC - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
#43 cliffa3 - http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cpu/prescott/p4...It doesn't look good for P4G8X with either the 2.8/533 or the 800 MHz FSB flavors.
mkruer - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
For those who missed it, X-bit gave a temperature comparison, for the all the chip.http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/presc...
Processor; Idle, Burn
Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.2GHz; 45oC, 61oC
Pentium 4 (Northwood) 3.2GHz; 30oC, 48oC
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz; 32oC, 51oC
This does not bode well for Intel unless they are going to make water cooling a standard.
But this Quote sums it up nicely IMHO “I am scared to imagine what happens to Prescott when we close the system case…”
lmonds - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
what??? no talk about heat on this chip? Come on anand this is vital info about prescott. Other sites are reporting temps up around 80c with the stock cooler. I understand that as it gets faster in mhz it will be a better performing chip but what kinda heat are we looking at at 4ghz? No way is a 80c chip going in any of my boxes. If keeping an intel badge on the front of my case means i have to have a delta fan in my box then you can forget about it.Stlr22 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
:DCaptante - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
Stlr22 ....Re post # 31 Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaha!!!!That one had me cracking up for 5 minutes!
It is good to laugh!!! :-)
Stlr22 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
Moreless a Prescott....