Intel's Pentium 4 570J - Will 3.8GHz do the trick?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 14, 2004 10:56 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
March of 2000 marked a very interesting time for AMD and Intel; just two days apart, each company broke the 1GHz barrier with an extremely high priced, low yield, barely available CPU – and users stood in awe. Today, Intel quietly introduces a Pentium 4 running at 3.8GHz, and the excitement is nowhere to be found.
Maybe it’s that the 3.8GHz clock speed is hidden behind the 570J model number. Maybe it’s that our latest benchmarks have shown that it’d take much more than 3.8GHz for Intel to truly regain the performance crown. Or maybe it’s the cancellation of the 4GHz Pentium 4 that has robbed the 3.8GHz model’s 15 minutes of fame. Then again, this isn’t the first time we’ve reviewed a speed-bump without getting too excited, so maybe business is just as usual.
The Intel Pentium 4 570J is the topic of discussion today; the 570 represents a Prescott core clocked at 3.8GHz, an increase of 200MHz over the Pentium 4 560. The Pentium 4 570J will fit in at the $637 price point (in 1K unit quantities), and will be faced with limited initial availability.
Since the CPU is labeled using Intel’s model numbering system it is meant for LGA-775 platforms only, which is in line with Intel’s plan to bring the Socket-478 platform to an end very soon. The J-suffix simply indicates support for Intel’s Execute Disable Bit (EDB), identical to AMD’s NX bit.
Enabled (on Windows) through Service Pack 2, EDB and NX prevent programs from executing malicious code contained within various parts of memory. We’ve talked briefly about EDB/NX here on AnandTech, and Microsoft also has an informative page on the specifics of Service Pack 2’s support for the technologies.
Architecturally, other than the inclusion of EDB support, the Pentium 4 570J remains unchanged from all previous Prescott based CPUs. If you want to understand a bit more about Prescott’s architecture be sure to read our extensive coverage of the technology and improvements/shortcomings of Intel’s flagship core. But if you’re already up to speed, let’s get right to it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
View All Comments
mrdudesir - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
Great idea including the Benchmark summary tables at the beginning of the article. I for one don't like having to always comb through the benchmark tables and pick out each specific test when its just a new processor being introduced. Keep up the great work guys.thebluesgnr - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
To include IE render times you have to keep in mind that it's also very dependent on the chipset. If you really wanted to compare the two processors ideally you would use two motherboards with the same southbridge (SiS, VIA and now ATI).jimmy43 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
A lot more often than i make spreadsheets in excel.KristopherKubicki - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
jimmy43: Although IE render time is a good test, Windows startup times seem kind of pointless. How often are you restarting your PC?Furthermore, virus scans are almost entirely bottlenecked on the HD.
Hope that helps,
Kristopher
jimmy43 - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Personally, I would love to seem some actual real world benchmarks such as these:-Windows Xp startup times.
-Internet Explorer startup/render time.
-Virus scan times
-THOROUGH multitasking tests.
I really dont understand why these are not included. Most uses will spend 90% of their time doing such tasks (except gaming, where AMD is the obvious leader) , and as such, these benchmarks are CRUICIAL. Obviosly, one can extrapolate results for these from synthetic benchmarks, but i personally would much rather see real world benchmarks. Thank you!
skunkbuster - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
i personally never put too much stock in synthetic benchmarksbut thats just me
Xspringe2 - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Woops sorry wrong comment section :)Xspringe2 - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Do you guys plan on testing any dual opteron nforce4 motherboards?stephenbrooks - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Well saying their recommendation is split doesn't mean to say it's split _equally_. ;)KeithDust2000 - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Anand, you say "Had AMD released a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 4000+ Intel would have had a more difficult time with the 570J, but given that things are the way they are our CPU recommendation is split between the two."I don´t think it´s a good idea to recommend the 3.8Ghz P4 at this point. While A64 still has the advantage of Cool´n´quiet (while INTEL has rather the opposite), apparently INTEL thinks 64bit support (and Cnq)
is important enough to introduce for desktops next quarter. As you know, 64bit can e.g. speed up applications like DIVX encoding by 15-25%, others even more, and will give a performance advantage of roughly 1 speed grade or more rather soon. Not taking that into account, and recommending the rather future-unproof 3.8 Ghz P4
doesn´t seem wise at all. You´ve seen in the Linux tests as well what AMD64 is capable of. Buying a 32bit CPU for more than $600 now just looks like a dumb idea at this point.