Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on February 1, 2004 3:06 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
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. If you are buying a Pentium 4 today, take advantage of the fact that vendors will want to get rid of their Northwood based parts and grab one of them.
Overclockers may want to pick up a Prescott to experiment with ~4GHz overclocks – it will be easier on Prescott than it is on Northwood. And once you get beyond currently available Northwood speeds you will have a CPU that is just as fast if not faster, depending on how high you go.
When you include AMD in the picture, the recommendation hasn’t changed since the Athlon 64 was introduced. If you find yourself using Microsoft Office for most of your tasks and if you’re a gamer the decision is clear: the Athlon 64 is for you. The Pentium 4 continues to hold advantages in content creation applications, 3D rendering and media encoding; if we just described how you use your computer then the Pentium 4 is for you, but the stipulation about Northwood vs. Prescott from above still applies.
The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.4GHz does provide an impressive show, but at a street price of over $1100 it is tough recommending it to anyone other than Gates himself.
With the recommendations out of the way, now let’s look at Prescott from a purely microarchitectural perspective.
Given that we’re at the very beginning of the 90nm ramp and we are already within reach of 4GHz, it isn’t too far fetched that Prescott will reach 5GHz if necessary next year. From an architecture perspective, it is impressive that Prescott remains in the same performance league as Northwood despite the fact that it has a 55% longer pipeline.
What we have seen here today does not bode well for the forthcoming Prescott based Celerons. With a 31 stage pipeline and 1/4 the cache size of the P4 Prescott, it doesn’t look like Intel will be able to improve Celeron performance anytime soon. We will keep a close eye on the value segment as it is an area where AMD could stand to take serious control of the market.
The performance of Prescott today is nothing to write home about, and given the extensive lengthening of the pipeline it’s honestly a surprise that we’re not castrating Intel for performance at this point. Prescott is however a promise of performance to come; much like the Willamette and even Northwood cores were relatively unimpressive at first, they blossomed into much sought-after CPUs like the Pentium 4 2.4C. The move to 90nm and a longer pipeline will undoubtedly mean more fun for the overclocking community, especially once production ramps up on Prescott.
Just as was the case with the very first Pentium 4s, Prescott needs higher clock speeds to spread its wings - our data on the previous page begins to confirm this. To put it bluntly: Prescott becomes interesting after 3.6GHz; in other words, after it has completely left Northwood’s clock speeds behind.
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INTC - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
Ummmm yea, kinda reminds me of cooking an egg on an Athlon XP http://www.biggaybear.co.uk/Menu/Aegg/Aeggs.htmlcliffa3 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
something good to include on the mb compatibility article would be what boards would house the 2.8/533...i'm wondering myself if the E7205 chipset would...i have a p4g8x, and it would be a welcome upgrade with HT and all the other goodies if it oc's well.Stlr22 - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
They didn't burn down, but the proc were running hot. Not to mention, these are the FIRST releases in the Prescott line. What's it gonna be like later on?....Just think, a P4 based computer that turns your living room into your very own Sauna!!....WHOOO-HOOO!!.....now that's what I call a bargain!
INTC - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
The message is clear: Anandtech and all of the other review sites didn't burn down so I guess it's not a flame thrower.Prescott is not as fast as I had hoped but is definitely not the step backwards as some were rumoring it to be. I think a Prescott 2.8 @ 250 MHz FSB will be really nice to play with until I see what Intel announces at IDF in a few weeks.
Icewind - Monday, February 2, 2004 - link
The message is clear: Im buying an Athlon 64.Vanners - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Did anyone catch the error in Pipelining: 101?if you halve the time for a stage in the pipeline and double the number of stages. Yes this means you can run at 2GHz instead of 1GHz but the reality is you're still taking 5ns to complete the pipe.
Look at it like a motorbike: You drop down a gear and rev harder; you make more noise but you are still doing the same speed.
The only reasons to drop down a gear are to break through your gears (i.e. slow down) or to rev significantly higher than the change in gear ratio in order to move faster (with more torque).
The trouble Intel has is that they drop down a gear then rev 6 months to a year later.
kamper - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Just curious, Anand or Derek: what board did you use to get the 3.72 GHz oc? Obviously it wasn't the intel board used in the benches. I guess we'll hear all about this in the compatibility review though :)keep up the good work, that last point about smaller margins at higher clockspeeds (vs. Northwood) was cool. Let's just hope the pattern continues.
Stlr22 - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Seems to me like people either got cought up in some of the hype and expected to much or some people expected to little and that history would repeat itself (Willamette vs Palomino)The fact that the Prescott fared much better in it's launch compared to the Willamette might be a hint to not underestimate it. Prescott isn't really looking bad now, and I think it will hit stride faster then the Willamette core did.
The next couple of years are gonna be really interesting.
Damn, ya just gotta love it!
ntrights - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
Great review!KF - Sunday, February 1, 2004 - link
I've grown to appreciate CRAMITPAL. If you read around the opinionated diatribes, he has some good stuff that people avoid saying for fear of retaliation. I suppose if I were in love with Intel, he would tick me off.But, it does look like Intel has created a CPU that should ramp up to speeds high enough to beat the A64 in 32bit mode, and that is all they needed to do.
Regardless of how much heat that is going to take, Intel must have some way in the works to handle it.
Looks like they might not charge an arm and leg for it, which is the biggest shock.