Intel's Pentium 4 570J - Will 3.8GHz do the trick?

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.