Intel whips out new Pentium 4. Nathan Davis discovered minus daks.
Without a doubt, we can pronounce now as being the most exciting time in quite a while for the CPU market sector. It's only just exploded into a beautiful fiery ball of glorious competition. AMD have let loose their highly anticipated 64-bit hounds onto the thirsty desktop market. But without even so much as a hint, Intel too were working on something -- though behind top secret closed doors -- planning a chip of cunning extremities. After several rumours, in jaw-breaking style they announced for the first time a new Pentium 4 during day two of the 2003 Intel Developer's Forum. It was totally unexpected but this wafer of silicon is a highly welcome revelation.
The chip is called the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (P4EE), and is rightly named, as Intel have fabricated it with a remarkable 2MB of Level 3 cache. Yes, you read correctly -- that's on top of the existing Level 2 512K, thus equalling a total of 2.5MB on-die cache. The debut unit we sourced runs at the current peak retail speed of the standard Pentium 4 -- 3.2GHz. Obviously this processor is an open assault on AMD and a ploy used to woo the market from jumping straight into bed with the Athlon 64/FX.
Rumour has it that the P4EE is a merely a pumped up Xeon (perhaps a rebadged, revamped Gallatin), clocked with a faster core frequency and 800MHz FSB support. Like the Xeons, this CPU is scoped towards the higher end of the market, but rather than servers and high-end graphics machines, it's directed toward the hardcore gamer (as with AMD's new 64-bit supporting x86 32-bit hybrids). As most gamers expect affordable performance, we struggle to see how the P4EE will be popular, as these are expected to hit the Australian market at the beginning of next year around the $1,500 mark. Something so rich is really only accessible to the absolute hardcore who live in money-tree plantations.
The specs are to kill for, the price is matchingly painful, but how does it really stack up? With the new booming CPUs hitting town, we decided to thrash the P4EE against both an Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) and a Pentium 4 3.0GHz. As much as we would have liked, at the time of review we didn't physically have access to an Athlon FX, so unfortunately we were unable to include one for testing. Damn you, wretched real world. For an excellent overview on the FX's performance, check out John Gillooly's 'Sealed Section' article from last month -- just keep in mind these tests are not directly comparable.
Common components among all three processors include the AOpen Aeolus FX5900 Ultra, and two sticks of Kingmax 256MB DDR400. Corsair RAM wasn't used, not only because Intel are explicitly against it for incompatibility problems, but we too have been having our own tribulations. The motherboards used were the Intel Bonanza D875PBZ for both Pentium processors, and Shuttle's feisty FN85 for the Athlon 64. As usual, the problematic Hyper-Threading was disabled.
Glancing at the scores, you can probably tell this chip is a can of total whoop arse. The additional 2MB of cache really helped in shooting this CPU to the top, continually flogging the Athlon 64 3200+ in all tests apart from UT2003 (even when overclocked to 3.4GHz). Q3A certainly produced a massive lead for the P4EE, giving off the highest average framerate from a desktop processor to hit the Atomic Labs. Obviously the difference between 100 and 500 frames is negligible to the human eye, but this really demonstrates the power of this processor -- attracting the envy of others. In AquaMark3, the Athlon 64 quite surprisingly came under the P4 3.0GHz. It's highly possible this is due to the FN85 board's restrictive 400MHz FSB.
Of course, we overclocked the P4EE (stock cooling), and we reached a very respectable 3.6GHz. Interestingly enough it chugged away nicely at this speed for both the Q3A and SYSmark2002 benchmarks, but it halted the system on all other tests. With better cooling, this problem would be eradicated, as the tests causing this are the one's really pushing the processor.
Because we tested the Athlon 64 in the Shuttle XPC SN85G4 barebones system (reviewed page 60), even though it's a great performer, it wasn't made with overclocking in mind so the max we could bump it up to was just under 2.1GHz. This isn't doing the chip justice, so stay tuned for something very special next month.
The P4EE is a brutified attempt to hold the market back from jumping on AMD's 64-bit bandwagon. With performance like this, who's complaining? The chip itself may be expensive, but look at it from another angle -- it's a new, powerful processor without the requirement of having to purchase an entirely new motherboard with a different socket type. You need only one of the multitudes of currently available Socket 478 boards with a quad-pumped frontside bus speed of 200MHz.
It's practically worth selling both your kidneys for. Although, due out January next year, you'll have more time to acquire yourself a cash stash in a less painful manner. But will this processor continue to hold out as the best? Perhaps AMD, too, have a secret processor. Only time will tell.
We can only speculate as to how far the x86-64 Athlon 64 will actually come on top when optimised 64-bit desktop applications and OSes come to light. Theoretically, 64-bit will burn the socks off the ageing 32-bit x86 architecture when far more supporting code exists. Ironically, the Athlon 64's advantage is it being based around x86 instead of the full-blown 64-bit IA-64 architecture. This way, when the time comes, we are smoothly weened over, instead of being thrown to the lions. But when is the ultimate question – and that’s now in the hands of the software developers.
For now, Intel's P4EE has swallowed the wind out of AMD's almost-billowing sails in one rewarding gulp. We realise Intel could have released it a lot earlier, but they waited, for obvious competitive reasons. Although not yet released, we crown the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition as reigning champ of the desktop processor world.
Issue: 107 | December, 2009