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Intel Prescott Released

Posted by Hemos on 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.

10 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Increased cache latency. by eddy · · 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

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  2. Slower!!! by PhrozenF · · 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 · · 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.

  3. from the amd information minister... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Our INTEL says Opteron is faster =)

  4. Prescott will be like the P4 by gumbysworld · · 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

  5. Re:2 Jags Prescott by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · 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
  6. More Reviews by RedSynapse · · 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

  7. Will software catch up? by erick99 · · 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

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
  8. Re:Athlon Performance Ratings by naztafari · · 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.

  9. What market is it for? by MountainMan101 · · 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?