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SpeedStep On Your Desktop - Intel's Prescott-2M

Posted by timothy on from the reality-check dept.

Kez writes "Intel's Prescott core has undergone a few changes, and the latest version - Prescott-2M - includes new features, one of which is Enhanced SpeedStep technology. Given the jokes about the heat that the Prescott gives out, Intel had to act. It was inevitable that a power (and heat) saving technology such as SpeedStep would find its way into desktop PCs. HEXUS.net has an article looking at the new Prescott-2M based Pentium 4 660 and Extreme Edition 3.74Ghz CPUs, examining their new features and performance."

7 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Work with current Motherboards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    These look like some nice enhancements to the current Prescott core, especially the 64-bit part. My question is whether or not these will work with current motherboards, such as my Abit AG8 with a 915P chipset. If so, that would offer a nice upgrade path.

  2. Parallel by Docrates · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey, if our brains do a nice enough job using lots of parallel instruction "dumb" processors, why are we so obssessed with ultra fast only-a-few-instructions-at-a-time single processors? I think the whole approach of the cell architechture is the right way to move forward.

    Please spare me the "the brain can't multiply 100000*1234555 fast enough" argument. We can have the best of both worlds: complex single "cells" (unlike brain cells) repeated many many times for parallelism.

    --

    There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
    1. Re:Parallel by Yartrebo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why does one company make a big press release (any maybe a few patent applications) and now it's called 'cell technology'. Call it node technology if you want that terminology. At least that isn't trademarked.

      It's just parallel processing with a few minor twists. Consoles since the day of the NES and SNES have worked similarly, though without quite as many chips.

      Call it by what it is: parallel processing.

  3. On balance, this is a good thing by gmknobl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's just unfortunate that while the advantage of having a stepping processor on the desktop will cut down on the heat in my building's rooms, it will also cut down on the processing power at the same time.

    Honestly, most people won't ever notice the difference since what they'll use it for is word processing and spreadsheets. They don't need the gawdoffal (tm) power these computers have now. In fact, the only thing driving the continual 3-4 year upgrade cycle is poorly written code and programs so huge that we'll never use all the features.

    Which makes me think that maybe we should call some moritorium on "new" software, perfect what we do have, use lower power processors that are simply more efficient, and stop buying pcs altogether.

    NAH!!! Just kidding! I mean, who really wants to stop this computer-centric commerce and put intel and microsoft out of business anyway... (looks around and sees slashdot's mac, linux and other os users...)

    Uh, easy guys. It's only a joke... ;)

  4. ok... by JeremyALogan · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have to admit that I am kindof torn about this. I have an older Athlon chip that use to get QUITE hot (more recent heatsinks solved this). However, one of the things I use to prefer about Intel chips is that they'd stop working before they'd fry themselves. This may not seem important, but it is to me... I had an Athlon 1800XP that burnt out itself and the motherboard within 2 seconds of startup because the heatsink/fan were underrated for the job (despite it's claims to the contrary). Now I'm a little more willing to pay for something that will "step" itself down instead of dieing.

    --
    Jeremy Logan's Website.
  5. Re:It's not inevitable... by Bri3D · · Score: 2, Interesting

    HMM...let's think...maybe that you aren't using all of your CPU all of the time. If you do clock scaling right it doesn't affect performance at all. This is the same as saying you should run your car at whatever RPM it gets max horsepower at because "that's what you paid for." And the excuse...let's think...power? My P4 systems used to throw breakers in my house. I had to WIRE UP A WHOLE CIRCUIT for each 2 of 8 computers in my house to prevent breaker trips/fires/etc. So yeah I'd say this is a good idea. BTW AMD uses thermal management/throttling too.

  6. IBM water cooled 'mainframes' make a comeback by gelfling · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Remember in the early 90's when many of you were still in grade school and the TCM based mainframes with their 400psi water chiller pumps were beginning to make way for the CMOS era? And we heard that a 10 CMOS CEC could easily replace a 2-3 TCM CEC because even though each one was rather slow and low powered they could gang them together and heat would not be a problem? We all chucked our TCM mainframes, got rid of all the chiller machinery with hacksaws and went on our merry ways.

    Well it looks like the prognostication for a Brave New World was a little premature. It looks like we'll start to see the return of complex and expensive water chillers yet. Not the homemade black tee shirt and Krispy Kreme version but real, large, complicated chiller pipes that are built right into the CPU chip.