Intel Pentium 4 6xx and 3.73EE: Favoring Features Over Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on February 21, 2005 6:15 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Audio/Video Encoding
MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10
DivX 5.2.1 with AutoGK
Armed with the DivX 5.2.1 and the AutoGK front end for Gordian Knot, we took all of the processors to task at encoding a chapter out of Pirates of the Caribbean. We set AutoGK to give us 75% quality of the original DVD rip and did not encode audio.
XviD with AutoGK
Another very popular codec is the XviD codec, and thus we measured encoding performance using it instead of DivX for this next test. The rest of the variables remained the same as the DivX test.
Windows Media Encoder 9
To finish up our look at Video Encoding performance we've got two tests both involving Windows Media Encoder 9. The first test is WorldBench 5's WMV9 encoding test.
But once we crank up the requirements a bit and start doing some HD quality encoding under WMV9 the situation changes dramatically:
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johnsonx - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
Is there no merit at all in running a few A64 vs P4 6xx benchmarks with the current RC build of XP x64? While I've found too many things I need don't work with XP x64 to use it, I did see that 3dMark03 ran fine. I know 3dMark itself isn't 64-bit, bit it does making heavy use of 64-bit DirectX and graphic driver calls. There must be a few more apps and games that could be called on...Maybe just limit the benchies to two processors, say an A64 3500+ vs. a Pentium 4 650, running the same benchmarks in 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, using just one GeForce 6xxx and one Radeon X8-something.
It'd just be interesting and useful to see which processor runs 64-bit code better, both absolutely and compared to each processor's 32-bit performance.
When the final release version of XP x64 does come out, it may be interesting to have benchmarks from the RC version to see what's improved (though I agree it wouldn't actually be useful in any practical sense).
Or perhaps Anandtech knows something I don't, like the release XP x64 is so close that running benches on the RC would be moot....
SLIM - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
#30 and 36Hans is right, the 3000 and 3200 cores in the graphs are not available in retail (downclocked 130nm cores) and are meant to show power consumption scaling with speed increases. It's unfortunate that they left out the more interesting comparison (the 130nm 3500+). The only 90nm AMD chip in the power graphs is the 3500+.
coldpower27 - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
Very strange your the only guys so far that show an increase in power consumption of the P4 6xx Series over the 5xx Series.Regs - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
Wow, a lot of good comments here. mlittl3, most of the Anandtech's population know that the EE's are just overpriced Northwood's on steroids (Big heads, small balls). And the crayon wax melting comparison made me laugh out loud.I just find it funny Intel is trying to slap on everything but the kitchen sink on these processors to make them more appealing. What's next? Are they going to come with a microwave toaster oven combo? With all do respect to Intel, to add on such features is not an easy thing to do at a engineering level but once again I feel that their marketing team is still running the show.
But what is AMD doing while Intel performs CPR on their Prescott's? All this news on Intel for the past few months left me nostalgic in what AMD is doing behind the scenes. SSE3 was their latest slap-on feature, but as we saw in your recent AMD article it offered little to no performance gain. AMD's next core has to offer lower L1-l2 Cache latencies. This is the only way I see AMD cornering Intel's Cores performance in every application. But im afraid we won't see any such thing until long-horn comes out in a few years. Until now we have to settle for worthless add-ons features for the desk-top consumers while we see both Intel and AMD battle the server market where Intel is mostly threatened.
HardwareD00d - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
In Soviet Russia, Prescott melts YOU!miketheidiot - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
why do the 3000 and 3200 have signifigantly higher power consumption than the 3500? I thought all 3200 and 3000 are also built on 90nm soi.RadeonGuy - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
Even With All the processors haveing 2mb cache they still suck assHans Maulwurf - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
#30 I think the 3000 and 3200 are not really Winchester cores. Maybe clocked down 130 nm cores.I´m interested in the memory timing of the A64. Is it 1T or 2T? This is an important information, you should always(!) give it the configuration part of reviews.
DerekWilson - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
One thing to remember about out power tests --We measure power draw at the wall. Power supplies are inefficient and magnify power draw at the wall. Power input to the PSU does not scale proportionally to power output.
Brian23 - Monday, February 21, 2005 - link
I thought that all winchesters were 90nm SOI.