Intel P4 800MHz FSB CPU Round-up

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Since the release of the AthlonXP by AMD they have pretty much ruled the roost in the "bang for the buck" performance department. With AMD's lower prices and faster MHz for MHz performance, Intel was falling a bit behind. If you're hearing "Intel" and "P4" more and more lately don't be surprised. Intel apparently yearned to get the title back and did something about it. With the release of the 800MHz bus Pentium4's there's little doubt in anyone's mind that has seen the benchmarks that Intel is back on top of the performance heap.

Taking the previous paragraph into account, that leaves us with really only one question. Which of the new P4 800MHz CPU's is right for you? Well I'm glad you asked because that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to take the three most popular chips in the enthusiasts community, the 2.4c, 2.6c, and 3.0Ghz, and pit them head to head to see where they really fall. What will be interesting is that as this is Dev Hardware, we'll be overclocking all three chips to speeds in excess of 3.5GHz and with their different overclocked bus speeds, see where they fall.

Before we dig into more benchmarks and graphs than you can (or at least should want to) shake a stick at, let's take a quick look at the new revision of the P4.

ABOUT THE PENTIUM4:

The biggest change we've seen in this newest stepping of the popular P4 is the shiny new 200MHz front side bus. Now since the P4 basically passes information 4 times per bus cycle (for lack of the more drawn out, and therefore more boring explanation) that gives us the 800MHz system bus that Intel is pimping. That additional bus speed is more important now than ever. With the increasing CPU speeds of late, more and more the system bus, and therefore the memory bus is becoming the bottleneck in modern systems. With the extra leg room the added bus speeds give us the memory and system as a whole can stretch out and deliver the performance it's capable of.

The other "biggy" feature you'll notice on all of these CPU's is the addition of Intel's highly promoted Hyper-Threading (HT) technology. Until now to get HT you were required to buy Intel's then flagship processor, the 3.06GHz part, with these chips on the market you can now buy a 2.4c with HT enabled.

Here's a quick snap of the P4 specs straight from Intel's page:

Processor Core Speeds Up to 3.06 GHz—including the new 3 GHz		Maximum performance for a wide range of emerging Internet, PC and workstation applications
Hyper-Threading Technology†		Improves performance and system responsiveness in today's multitasking environments by enabling the processor to execute multiple instruction threads in parallel.
New 0.13u process technology		Enables higher frequency and lower power
Intel® NetBurst™ Micro-architecture		Designed to deliver highest performance in video, graphics, multimedia and other sophisticated applications
Up to 800-MHz System Bus		High bandwidth between the processor and the rest of the system improves throughput and performance
512KB L2 Cache (for 2A GHz and Faster) or 256KB Cache (for 2 GHz and Slower)		Enhances performance by providing fast access to heavily used data and instructions
Hyper-Pipelined Technology		Extended pipeline stages increase overall throughput
Streaming SIMD Extensions 2		144 new instructions accelerate operation across a broad range of demanding applications
Rapid Execution Engine		Arithmetic Logic Units run at twice the core frequency, speeding execution in this performance critical area
128-Bit Floating Point Port		Floating Point performance boost provides enhanced 3D visualization, life-like gaming and scientific calculations
SIMD 128-bit Integer		Accelerates video, speech, encryption and imaging/photo processing
Execution Trace Cache		Greatly improves instruction cache efficiency, maximizing performance on frequently used sections of software code
Advanced Dynamic Execution		Improved branch prediction enhances performance for all 32-bit applications by optimizing instruction sequences
Thermal Monitoring		Allows motherboards to be cost-effectively designed to expected application power usages rather than theoretical maximums
Built-in Self Test (BIST)		Provides single stuck-at fault coverage of the microcode and large logic arrays, plus testing of the instruction cache, data cache, Translation Lookaside Buffers, and ROMs
IEEE 1149.1 Standard Test Access Port and Boundary Scan		Enables testing of the Pentium® 4 processor and system connections through a standard interface

Pentium4 2.4c

sSpec Number SL6WF Processor Frequency 2.40 GHZ CPUID String 0F29h Package Type 478 pin PPGA FC-PGA2 Core Voltage   Bus Speed 800 MHz Thermal Guideline 66.2W Core Stepping D1 Thermal Spec 74°C L2 Cache Size 512 KB Manufacturing Technology 0.13 micron L2 Cache Speed 2.40 GHz Bus/Core Ratio 12 Datasheet   Product Order Codes   Box Order Code BX80532PG2400D OEM Order Code RK80532PG056512

Pentium4 2.6c

sSpec Number SL6WH Processor Frequency 2.60 GHZ CPUID String 0F29h Package Type 478 pin PPGA FC-PGA2 Core Voltage   Bus Speed 800 MHz Thermal Guideline 69.0W Core Stepping D1 Thermal Spec 75°C L2 Cache Size 512 KB Manufacturing Technology 0.13 micron L2 Cache Speed 2.60 GHz Bus/Core Ratio 13 Datasheet   Product Order Codes   Box Order Code BX80532PG2600D OEM Order Code RK80532PG064512

Pentium4 3.0GHz

sSpec Number SL6WK Processor Frequency 3.00 GHZ CPUID String 0F29h Package Type 478 pin PPGA FC-PGA2 Core Voltage   Bus Speed 800 MHz Thermal Guideline 81.9W Core Stepping D1 Thermal Spec 70°C L2 Cache Size 512 KB Manufacturing Technology 0.13 micron L2 Cache Speed 3.00 GHZ Bus/Core Ratio 15 Datasheet   Product Order Codes   Box Order Code BX80532PG3000D OEM Order Code RK80532PG080512

I have to admit that I've never been one that wants to stare at specs all day long, I've always had my interest peaked more by results. For those of you that absolutely MUST know the down and dirty on everything, feel free to check out our P4 3.0GHz standalone review for all of the details and then some. For the rest of you, here's some quick pics and then we'll roll with the benchmarks!

OBLIGATORY IMAGES

Let's take a quick peek at all three CPU's before we let this battle of sorts kick off.

Pentium4 2.4c Images

 

 

 

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