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Intel 800 MHz FSB Processor Family Review

David writes "Techware Labs recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Intel's new 800 MHz front-side bus (FSB) processor family. The review includes a overview of the features in this processor family, Intel's new Springdale and Canterwood chipsets, and an analysis of processor scaling within this family. The article focuses on how the relationship between CPU and video card affect various aspects of performance."

19 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Enough! You insensitive clod! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I already feel bad enough having bought 5 486's at $2000 each. Now, my ebay auction to sell one for $10 got 0 bids. I mean, a 99.5% decerase in value is bad enough - you don't have to rub it in by telling me about the latest in computing!

  2. Spending some time with .... by watzinaneihm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spending time is nice but This is the page I think they should have linked to .
    Basically in the review they compare different chips (2.4Ghz, 2.8Ghz) etc. against each other all with 800Mhz FSB

    --
    .ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
  3. Bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In 1980 I had a 1.023 MHz Apple ][+ and I could type ~70 WPM. Intel is pushing 3+ GHz chips and I can still only type ~70 WPM.

    1. Re:Bah by KingDaveRa · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah yes, but could you play an MP3, encode a movie, search for the cure for cancer andtype at ~70WPM?

    2. Re:Bah by verbatim_verbose · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well clearly you're upgrading the wrong parts. Go overclock your keyboard, silly.

    3. Re:Bah by Some+Dumbass... · · Score: 4, Funny

      In 1980 I had a 1.023 MHz Apple ][+ and I could type ~70 WPM. Intel is pushing 3+ GHz chips and I can still only type ~70 WPM.

      Clearly the solution to this problem is a benchmark-specific optimiation to your typing. Try typing just the word "I" and see how many wpm you can get...

  4. Tom's hardware had it first by nounderscores · · Score: 4, Informative

    Read all about it here

    ___________________________________
    The spiders are coming

  5. too much power != good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The more powerful the chips intel pushes the less effcient the coder becomes, i remember when i used to tweak my programs so they would run optimally on a slower machines, now a days its like you need 192mb and 500mhz for word processing. People need to get back to the old school days when a 486/66mhz and 4mb RAM was minumum. I can understand how games evolve and more power is needed, but it's not just games that have this high requirement these days.

    1. Re:too much power != good by Angry+White+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Although I wholehartedly agree with your comment about the proliferation of inefficient coding styles, the additional power allows us to write higher abstraction languages, almost to the point of natural-language programming. More structure introduced into programming can only mean a shift to programming in english, and that can only mean less poor spelling on slashdot.

      I see it as win-win

      --
      You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
  6. It'd be nice... by Mister+Black · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It'd be nice if they normalized all their charts with some current non 800FSB proc+board so I can see how much of an improvement there actually is.

    --

    You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
  7. dualies by bloosqr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone know why the dual xeon motherboards aren't flipping to 800mhz? I would think that a faster bus would make more of a difference on dual processor boxes. Currently the memory bus is at 2*266 = 533 and I think it will move to 667 either late this year or early next year. On the other hand, i've noticed iwill is now selling a dual xeon motherboard for $300 and the chips are not much more expensive than their "normal" equivalents. (Note I am talking about the dual processor xeon chips not the "made of pure gold" 4 processor xeon mp chips)

    -bloo

    1. Re:dualies by bloosqr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ahh the 266*2 was wishful thinking :). You are right about its 133*4, apologies about that.

      My understanding is that xeon mp line is for their
      4-way based motherboards. The main advantage is they have a meg of cache on them. But the normal processorshave 512k the same as the new p4's I believe.

      The xeon mp motherboards are $2k and the processors are about $2k each (pricewatch 1.6ghz/1meg cache i.e made of gold :)

      In any case the normal xeon dual systems are actually not that much more than buying a 875pe
      motherboard and processor. Btw here is the road map I found on the inquirer. Apparantly the xeon mp's are going up to 2.8ghz/2 megs of cache and the normal xeons are going up to 3.06/1 meg of cache and selling for $700.

      Here's the weird part, while it looks like intel skipped 667 fbs for the PIV line, the xeon line will "ramp up" to 667 early next year.

      In anycase I'm probably going to build a "normal" xeon/iwill running at ~2.66 which comes out to really not much more than a normal PIV/865/875 series. The selling of 800mhz memory/bus speeds on the PIV line while keeping the xeon line at 533/667 makes no sense to me. I was going to wait until a new set of mbs/chipset came out for the xeons but it doesn't look it will happen.

      -bloo

  8. You know it's time to upgrade... by splerdu · · Score: 5, Funny

    When the new processor's FSB is higher than your rig's CPU clock =(

  9. Buy the 2.4 by wpmegee · · Score: 5, Informative

    The 2.4c will be finding a home in my box soon because of it's amazing overclocking.

    At this forum (click on Intel cpus) almost everyone has successfully overclocked theirs over 3Ghz on air, with most hitting 3.2 or 3.4 (and don't forget a 1 Ghz fsb).

    A popular motherboard to go with it is Abit's IC-7 with the i875 chipset. The processor and motherboard are just $180 and $145 respectively over at Newegg, so don't waste your money on 3.0s.

  10. No Athlon XP benchmarks? by Alereon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What good is benchmarking the new P4-C processors without comparing them to Athlon XPs, or even older P4s? Really, you can just multiply the performance of a P4-C 3.0Ghz by 0.8 to get a guesstimate of the performance differences within the family; what really matters is how they perform in comparison with the competition.

  11. Not the best article ... by vorwerk · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been planning to upgrade my computer at the end of this month, and have been keeping a pretty close eye on the 865/875 motherboard and chip performance reviews. This article didn't really enlighten me as much as the following Tom's Hardware reviews:

    here

    and

    here

  12. Actually 200Mhz QDR [also, bits vs. bytes] by Alereon · · Score: 5, Informative

    The FSB on a P4-C is actually clocked at 200Mhz, but data is transferred four times per clock cycle, boosting the effective bandwidth to equal that of an 800Mhz FSB. Latencies are, however, still equal to that of a 200Mhz FSB.

    I believe the problem with your calculation is that you calculated that the bus is 8 bytes wide. 8 bytes is 64 bits, the standard bus width on modern systems.

  13. Re:On Performance... by Pulzar · · Score: 4, Informative

    That article showed that lower latency doesn't mean higher bandwidth (and this is only true if your original latency is low enough, mind you!), but it didn't consider overall performance. Latency has indeed an impact on the performance -- look at Tom's Hardware article on performance improvements when Intel's PAT is enabled. All PAT does is lower latency by 2 cycles.

    --
    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
  14. Re:Ha! by Schugy · · Score: 3, Informative

    AMD has Opteron and Athlon 64 with Ultra Low Latancy controllers. Previews say that performance often is not a matter of maximum bandwith (3,2GB/s Athlon 64 and 6,4GB/s Opteron) and the Athlon 64 performs just like a P4 xxxxC with FSB 800 in memory dependent benchmarks like q3a. Have fun :-)