Intel Prescott Released

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Posted by Hemos on Monday February 2, 2004 @01:00AM from the yet-another-CPU dept.

daemonslayer writes "The nondisclosure agreement on Intel's long awaited new Pentium 4, codenamed Prescott, has just been lifted. So can it beat its predecessor, the Northwood? Find out at Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, or any of the other thousand review sites." Or HotHardware, PC Magazine, XBitLabs, or HardOCP. Basically, looks like it's faster, but still not the fastest in all areas. Tide goes in, tide goes out.

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Increased cache latency. by eddy · 2004-02-02 01:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

The most interesting characteristic of these new P4's is IMHO:"
"On the other hand, Prescott is looking at some massive increases in latency, the access latency for the Level 1 cache has quadrupled, and the Level 2 cache accesses are approximately 50% slower." -- Lost Circuits

Intel better ramp up that clock and/or have everyone optimizing for SSE3 if they want to dominate the benchmarks.

Suggested mod-limit: 3, Interesting

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Belief is the currency of delusion.
Thoughts. by DarkHelmet · 2004-02-02 01:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

In case you don't want to read the article, here you go from Anand:
If you're looking for nothing more than a purchasing decision let's put it simply: if you're not an overclocker, do not buy any Prescott where there is an equivalently clocked Northwood available. This means that the 2.80E, 3.00E, 3.20E are all off-limits, you will end up with a CPU that is no faster than a Northwood and in most cases slower.
I figured as much before the NDA was lifted. After all, with a 31 stage pipeline, the Prescott was bound to be clock for clock slower than it's previous incarnations.
This only makes me wonder. If a 4ghz Prescott is going to be much like a 3ghz Northwood, is AMD going to adjust its PR Rating to the new cores that Intel has? This will only end up confusing things, as a newly rated A64-3400 will be faster than a "Higher numbered" intel version.
Great... Just what we need. More PR confusion.

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1. Re:Thoughts. by The+One+KEA · 2004-02-02 01:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  My biggest beef with Prescott is that Intel rather foolishly lengthened the pipleine and monkeyed with the core design without making the subsequent changes needed to increase clock speed. AMD had it right all along - efficient IPC and low clock speed.
  
  This situation is shaping up, in my eyes, to be a repeat of the release of the Willamette P4 - an inefficient IPC coupled with a low clock speed nearly killed the P4 before Intel could increase the clock speed. The same thing is happening here - another inefficient IPC design with a clock speed equal to the current Northwoods, with subsequent losses in performance. And like another poster here said, the A64 3400+ still beats the Prescott in a number of benchmarks, or ties evenly with it. Despite Anand's statements about how higher clockspeeds increase the efficiency of the Prescott core, I still think that this processor is an expensive upgrade that doesn't do very much.
  
  If Intel can't get the clock speed up on Prescott, I have a feeling that it's going to tank until the LGA775 packaging is finally brought out, which is going to mean more business for AMD and a lot of eggs on Intel's face.
  
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2. Re:Thoughts. by ameoba · 2004-02-02 02:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You make it sound like Intel is stupid & trying to screw over the consumer with this product. I'm by no means an Intel fanboy, but you're kinda off base.
  
  If you look at the benches, the Prescott cores generally aren't too much slower than Northwoods and the areas where they lag the most are the ones that SSE3 looks like it should alleviate.
  
  The Prescott delivers respectable performance and will end up costing less at the same clock speeds than Northwood. We're not looking at an event like the original P4 launch where the new chip was not only slower but also more expensive & required hardware upgrades to use.
  
  The Prescott is not being marketed as an upgrade to Northwood systems; while I'm sure Intel would love you to replace your 3.2C with a 3.2E, they're not suggesting it be done. They're just introducing it now so they can ramp up production before the Northwood gets phased out.
  
  As far as the 775 socket goes, Athlon64 is also kinda waiting for a new packaging to reach its full capabilities; the A64 & A64FX lines are going to be moving to a unified socket that'll give the A64 access to dual-channel memory.
  
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Will this work? by after · 2004-02-02 01:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

Can I overclock it to 5 HGz ?
Slower!!! by PhrozenF · 2004-02-02 01:03 · Score: 5, Informative

Why don't you go check benchmarks before you say faster....Most sites say it is slower than the earlier Pentium 4 because of the increased number of stages in the pipeline. And obviously, it's beaten blue by the AMD A64 3400+ in more than half of the real-world benchmarks.

Sure, the increase in cache helps, but the increase in pipeline stages really kills intensive non-repetitive computing tasks...

and oh...i think I got first post!
1. Re:Slower!!! by sbennett · 2004-02-02 01:20 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's marginally slower now, but the margin is less than when the original P4 came out, and for much the same reasons. But then again, the original P4s were designed to run above 2GHz, so they were slow at 1.4GHz. I'd suggest that Prescott is probably designed to be running in excess of 4GHz, so it is slower now than the Northwoods. That'll change once they start ramping up the clock speeds, and the effects of a longer pipeline become less significant.
from the amd information minister... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-02 01:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Our INTEL says Opteron is faster =)
2 Jags Prescott by reality-bytes · 2004-02-02 01:18 · Score: 4, Funny

Its only people from the UK who will know what I'm talking about but every time I hear 'prescott', an overweight, drink-laden scruffy politician with a McDonalds voucher in his pocket springs to mind.

This also conjours up an impression of the Intel Prescotts being in ineffecient, environmentally-unfriendly and handling code in an annoying accent.

Why oh why couldn't Intel have called them something else, like Intel Bloody Powerful chips?

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1. Re:2 Jags Prescott by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2004-02-02 01:22 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Its only people from the UK who will know what I'm talking about but every time I hear 'prescott', an overweight, drink-laden scruffy politician with a McDonalds voucher in his pocket springs to mind.
  
  Intel markets it as the TedKennedy core in the US.
  
  --
  "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Prescott will be like the P4 by gumbysworld · 2004-02-02 01:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Prescott will be like the P4. It will be slow in the begining as they milk every mhz stepping they can but will slow start to shine when they pump up the MHZ.

Its a shame but that is how it goes and went with the P4 it need more speed to be able to show it true worth.

It would be nice if they said screw it and just released it a 4.0
More Reviews by RedSynapse · 2004-02-02 01:24 · Score: 5, Informative

Tech-Report Prescott Review
accelenation Prescott Review
Ace's Hardware Prescott Review
Gamers Depot Prescott Review
HardTecs4U
Hexus
K-Hardware Prescott Review,
Legit Reviews Prescott Review
LostCircuits
MBReview Prescott Review
VR-Zone
X-bit labs Prescott Review
XtremeSystems Prescott Review
Extreme-tech Prescott Review
Will software catch up? by erick99 · 2004-02-02 01:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Intel marches steadily on with new chips and planned obsolescence for the old chips. I tend to feel that software is lagging in terms of taking advantage of more powerful and faster processors. I suppose some programs such as PhotoShop can take advantage of faster chips when rendering large and complex files. Still, I think the processors are, by and large, way ahead of software.
Happy Trails,
Erick

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Re:Readable review by Emil+Brink · 2004-02-02 01:36 · Score: 4, Informative

You can click once more at Anand's to get a Printer-version, which is really nice. It's how I usually read their content. Can't direct-link you (I think), since it's a JavaScript thing. Scroll down, and click on "Print this Article".

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Re:Athlon Performance Ratings by naztafari · 2004-02-02 01:36 · Score: 5, Informative

"is AMD going to adjust its PR Rating to the new cores that Intel has?"

I don't think so. AMD Athlon PRs are not measured against Intel Chips.

AFAIK, the AMD Athlon PR numbers are the newer CPUs' (Athlon XPs, 64s) ratings against the older Athlon Thunderbirds which were the last ones that were labeled and sold in MHz/GHz.

So roughly, an Athlon XP2600+ would be akin to an Athlon Thunderbird that was theoretically made to run at 2.6GHz

Remember, a 1.33GHz Athlon Thunderbird stacked up pretty well against a 1.7GHz P4 back then, and only lost out on SSE optimizations.
What market is it for? by MountainMan101 · 2004-02-02 01:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

You have to ask the question!

With the Athlon 64, IA64 and G5 vying for the 64bit market, and Athlon offering native supports of 32-bit binaries. Why would anyone want a new series of Pentium 4E?

Is Intel feeling that Athlon may be about to make leaps and bounds in the small business/desktop market?
British Politician by anaplasmosis · 2004-02-02 01:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Intel did realise that "Prescott" is a much lampooned British politician, didn't they? Official bio here; http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1376.asp Highly entertaining game here; http://www.urban75.com/Punch/prescott.html
Just suck it up Intel, GIve us what we want!! by OlivierB · 2004-02-02 01:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Is it just me or does anybody have the felling Intel is completly lead by Marketing GHZ frills? Looks to me like they didn't make the most efficient chip, they just designed a straight shooter for 4/5 GHZ. We all know their current P4 Extreme are real Power hogs and not all that efficient. Thus my question, why can't they focus on delivering a 9nm version of the Pentium M? With it's low consumption and heat they could have surely clocked this big boy in the 3.2GHz area and taken care of AMD. All these benchmarks won't make a difference as Mom & Pop will go to COMPUSA and be this computer is Faster-than-3Ghx-because-it's-a4-Ghz. Time to get some AMD stock

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Linux by millahtime · 2004-02-02 01:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

Has anyone done a test of the AMD64 running a 64 bit OS vs P4 running a 32 bit OS? Say Linux. To see the difference when they full power of the chip is taken advantage of. Especially with rendering. It may be a little like comparing Apples and Oranges but comparing these 2 chips can be that way. And to throw in a 32 bit OS on the AMD64 chip isn't really fair to it's power. It's not really using the full potential of the chip.

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Re:Athlon Performance Ratings by Dan+Ost · 2004-02-02 02:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

The way it works is that an XP2600+ is 2.6 times faster than a 1GHz Duron,
a 3000+ is 3 times faster than a 1GHz Duron, etc.

This is according to "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" 3rd edition (O'Reilly).

Can anyone back this up with a reference from AMD?

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*sigh* back to work...
Re:Origin of the name Prescott by stevel · 2004-02-02 04:45 · Score: 4, Informative

Intel uses "geographic" names (towns, mountains, etc.) for all its code names, since they can't be copyrighted. Prescott is a town in Oregon (a state from which Intel draws many of its code names), so I think that the connection to Moby Dick is just a coincidence.