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Intel Northwood CPU Review

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the king-of-the-hill dept.

gcshaw2nd writes: "Here it is, the first hands-on review I've seen of Intel's new Northwood chip, running at two gigahertz. It overclocks like a hog, easily to 2.5Ghz."

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by werve · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does any one really notice the difference in speed between even 1.7GHz and the 2.0Ghz? I know it will scrape time from a kernel re-compile, but what non-IT consumers care about this? Especially considering you can get a dual 1.3 GHz celeron system for next to nothing.

    I think Intel would make more money by even lowering prices even further and offering P4 SMP (non-Xeon) - they'd sell more chips... and make me happier ;-)

    1. Re:What's the point? by archen · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Personally I really don't care about processor speed any more. My 1.4Ghz Athlon is plenty fast for me. But keep in mind that the processor does a lot more than it used to. Pop open my Pentium 133 and you find a LARGE card for just about everything. Nowdays you get these skimpy little cards that make the main CPU do everything for them.

      But really, if someone gave me the option of a 10Ghz computer, or a computer with twice the bus speed/bandwidth - I'd take the better bus any day.

  2. Only 2.5 Ghz? by Deltan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some people have had that little gem up to 3Ghz. Not exactly in English, but pictures say a thousand words.

  3. Re:Overclocking by BWJones · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When performing calculations that can take hours or days even, an increase in performance of even 10% can result in significant time/money savings. There are those mid level workstation users (like me) and high end users that can and do need every last bit of performance they can get. At this level, a few hundred $$'s every few months is nothing.

    Hell, just the yearly support costs of a single SGI Octane are such that I could afford to purchase a new Macintosh G4 with a flat panel yearly for what it costs. So buying a new $800 chip twice a year does not even make me blink.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
  4. Intel's worst nightmare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    All the comments here along the lines of, "Does anyone really need this much speed?" (which I agree with, BTW) point out the Big Ugly Problem facing Intel: The industry has hit a plateau in terms of demand for horsepower. In a very short time the PC industry has converted from a "build out" phase to a maintenance phase, and that's very, very bad news for all the CPU companies, particularly Intel.

    Everyone loves to talk about how much longer we can push Moore's Law, but no one seems to want to address the real issue--how much longer will demand for ever-faster PC's be high enough to fuel the ever-more-expensive development of those new CPU's? I think we're about to find out that Moore's Law was subvervient to the law of supply and demand all along.

    Intel's other big problem is the IA64 and its hideous architecture that puts an amazing burden on compiler writers. Even worse, it's more than a little reminiscient of the IAPX-432 fiasco from a bunch of years ago, the last time Intel tried to introduce a spiffy, all-new architecture...