Intel pentium 4 1.8 ghz socket type: Pentium 4 1.8A — Technical City

IndexThe Intel Pentium 4: Now available in 6 flavors!Hot at 1.8GHz?Introducing 4-Layer Pentium 4 MotherboardsThe CompetitionThe TestContent Creation/Office PerformanceContent Creation/Office Productivity Performance (continued)IT/Constant Computing Performance3D Rendering & Animation Performance3D Gaming PerformanceFinal Words

It becomes increasingly more difficult to compete when what you’re up against
is cheaper, faster and being touted by most of the press as the only solution
that makes sense.   On the flip side of the coin, things can get pretty tough
when your chief competitor has the marketing muscle, dollars and trust in their
brand name to convince over 70% of the market that they are still the right
choice.

This is the predicament that both AMD and Intel happen to find themselves in. 
They each have a different set of issues to deal with and in a sense, are both
fighting an uphill battle for control in the x86 microprocessor space. 

AMD’s solution is one that has been promising since it’s introduction.  The
Athlon processor not only outperforms everything Intel can offer in almost all
situations, but the Athlon is also selling for extremely low prices.  The flagship
Athlon 1.4GHz processor can be found for under $180 while Intel’s Pentium 4
1.7GHz processor will set you back over $300.  The only problem AMD has really
had with acceptance of their Athlon processor is platform reliability and it
appears as if NVIDIA may be the one to solve that issue very soon.  

The Pentium 4 processor has been Intel’s answer to the very successful Athlon. 
Although capable to run at very high clock speeds, the processor’s NetBurst
architecture has not even been slightly tapped by currently available clock
frequencies.  The unfortunate result of this is that the real world performance
of today’s Pentium 4 systems is below that of what AMD can offer.  When you
combine lower performance with a higher price, you can easily see why AMD has
picked up a lot of market share recently.

On the right track

In the conclusion of our first Pentium 4 review from last year we stated that
two requirements must be fulfilled in order for the Pentium 4 to succeed.  Although
we’ve made these two points time and time again, they bear repeating today:

1)      The clock speed of the Pentium 4 must ramp
up significantly higher than what it is at today; and

2)      Software optimizations for the Pentium 4’s
NetBurst architecture must be present in commonly used applications and games. 2 die manufactured on a 0.18-micron process. 

The watermark behind the Pentium 4 die is a US dime just to give
you an idea of how big the core is.

The problem with a die this large is that it is quite costly to produce.  Not
only that but the larger your die size, the greater the chance is for a defect
to occur at the manufacturing stage that would render the die useless.  There
honestly isn’t much that can be done about this right now.  Intel does have
some of the most advanced manufacturing facilities on the planet so their Pentium
4 yields should be as high as possible, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t
still governed by the same laws of manufacturing that all semiconductor companies
must deal with. 

Help is on the way, as Intel will be making a transition to a 0.13-micron process
which should cut the Pentium 4’s die size in half.  While this alone will decrease
manufacturing costs and increase yields, we believe that Intel will use some
of the die savings to increase the L2 cache size of the processor to 512KB which
will improve performance somewhat.  

There isn’t much more Intel can do about improving software optimizations that
they already haven’t done.  Intel’s compilers are readily available and can
offer relatively impressive performance enhancements for current code on Pentium
4 platforms. 

We know what Intel has to do in order to remain competitive, and you better
believe that Intel does as well.  They have some other tricks up their sleeves
that will be revealed next year but for now there’s not much that they can do
other than to stick to their processor release schedule and milk the most out
of their 0.18-micron process.

Today Intel turns the clock speed knob up another notch with their release
of the first 1.8GHz Pentium 4 processor.  Priced at $562 in 1,000 unit quantities
to distributors, the decision between a Pentium 4 1.8GHz and an Athlon 1.4GHz
processor priced at $174 isn’t a very difficult one from a cost standpoint;
but what about performance?  At 1. 7GHz three months ago, the Pentium 4 was starting
to get competitive with the Athlon, does another 100MHz really mean that much
more?

The Intel Pentium 4: Now available in 6 flavors!
IndexThe Intel Pentium 4: Now available in 6 flavors!Hot at 1.8GHz?Introducing 4-Layer Pentium 4 MotherboardsThe CompetitionThe TestContent Creation/Office PerformanceContent Creation/Office Productivity Performance (continued)IT/Constant Computing Performance3D Rendering & Animation Performance3D Gaming PerformanceFinal Words

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Review: Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz [‘Northwood’ core] — CPU

Introduction

Recently I took a look at Intel’s quickest 0.18u processor and we commented that Intel were moving to 0.13u soon with the new Northwood processors. In the time that’s passed Intel have come up with the goods as promised and here we are today with a closer look at the new chip.

At the time of the 2GHz ‘Willamette’ review the ‘Northwood’ had just become available in 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz forms and the 2.2 sat proudly at the top of the tree in Intel’s grand scheme of things. That’s still the case today with the 2.4GHz processor on the 0.13u process being Intel’s most powerful consumer offering.

What’s changed since then is that the new 0.13 micron processors have also become available at slower speeds in volume, specifically 1.6 and 1.8, and it’s the 1.8GHz processor that I’ll be looking at today.

A couple of sites are pushing the 1.6A as the processor of choice from Intel due to price, low multiplier (remember, multipliers are fixed on Intel consumer CPU’s) and their ability to overclock VERY well.

We’re a big fan of the 1.8 around these parts however with myself and a few good friends getting used to running and overclocking these new processors on a variety of motherboards.

We took a close look at the underlying architecture for the Pentium 4 in the 2GHz Willamette review so if you want to brush up on your core knowledge then take a look here, specifically the section on Netburst. You could also do a lot worse than hit somewhere like Anandtech if you want to make sure you have all bases covered.

So what’s changed other than the move to the 0.13 micron die process with these new CPU’s? The most obvious change is the move to 512kb of cache memory which brings with it a few key benefits. We saw in the previous review that with the long pipeline in the Pentium 4, being able to keep it busy for as long as possible is where the speed gains are to be found.

If you think of the extra cache memory as a bigger buffer between the CPU and main memory then you can see why it helps to keep the later stages of the pipe busy where the 256kb version would maybe have some difficulty.

Intel have speculated that when running existing code, only around 33% of the execution units are in use at any one time with the other two thirds of the CPU sitting idle. That’s a lot of untapped power so the extra cache helps keep the pipe busier and in use more often.

Also, as always with a die shrink, the core voltage needed for proper operation drops, in this case from 1. 75V to a max Vcore of 1.5V (more on this later).

Onto the performance.

Performance

As usual when we take a look at CPU performance we’ll be running Sandra, POVRay, 3DMark and also for a decent test of CPU speed, Quake3. We don’t usually look at Q3 in our CPU reviews but we’ll have a quick look today.

We’ll check out overclocked performance too on the same graphs to keep things nice and compact and save you reading gargantuan amounts of repeated information.

As always, a look at the test platform.

• DFI NB70-SC Intel i845-D Socket 478 Motherboard
• Intel 1.8Ghz ‘A’ Northwood Processor (512kb, 1.5V)
• 1 x 256Mb Crucial PC2100 CAS2.5 DDR module (CAS2 selected)
• Gainward Ti550 GeForce3 Ti500 64Mb
• Adaptec 39160 PCI SCSI Dual Channel U160 controller
• 2 x 73Gb Seagate Cheetah U160 10,000rpm SCSI disks
• Plextor 12/10/32S SCSI CDRW
• Pioneer 6x Slot-load SCSI DVD
• Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy Player (SB0090 version)

• Windows XP Professional Build 2600. xpclient.010817-1148
• DetonatorXP 22.40 NVIDIA drivers
• POVRay v3.1g.msvc.unofficial-win32 dated 28 August 2001
• 3DMark 2001 Professional
• SiSoftware Sandra v2002.1.8.59

So, first up, SiSoftware Sandra, specifically the CPU Arithmetic and CPU Multimedia Benchmarks.

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark @ 1.8GHz (18 x 100)

CPU Multimedia Benchmark @ 1.8GHz (18 x 100)

Nothing incredibly exciting here except to note that on the i845D the Northwood runs as expected. On to the overclocked numbers. Remembering that the DFI NB70 has no facility for increasing the core voltage on the CPU makes the overclock we obtained all the more exciting.

At default voltage, the CPU managed to make it into Windows at 2358Mhz at 131MHz FSB. However the maximum stable speed that would run all our benchmarks was a slightly lower 128MHz FSB which gave us 2304MHz. 2.3GHz or 500MHz over stock speed without a voltage increase is very impressive. Here’s the Sandra results at that speed.

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark @ 2.3GHz (18 x 128)

CPU Multimedia Benchmark @ 2.3GHz (18 x 128)

Here we can see the processor forge a decent lead over all the reference processors in Sandra in the 2 benchmarks. The XP2000 and 2.2Ghz Northwood are noticably absent from the list and in the multimedia benchmark the XP2000 would take the lead back with it’s incredibly strong FPU but the little 1.8 does very well when overclocked and performance is very nice indeed.

As we move on to the POVRay tests it will be interesting to see if the extra 256kb of L2 cache on the Northwoods has any bearing on the render time since it doesn’t affect Sandra’s results.

First off, the results for the P3 and P4 binaries when running at 1.8GHz.

POVRay P3 and P4 Binaries @ 1.8GHz (18 x 100)

The execution time for the render doesn’t get any faster on the Northwood compared to a 1.8Ghz Willamette processor. The POVRay working set would appear to fit nicely into the smaller cache of the Willamette CPU’s so the increase in cache size provides no gain. This is to be expected when the application being run is happy in the smaller cache size.

As we increase speed to 2.3GHz we should see an impressive speedup and the quickest CPU results we’ve ever seen at Hexus should be provided by the P4 binary and 2.3Ghz combination.

POVRay P3 and P4 binaries @ 2.3GHz (18 x 100)

As we increase the clock speed by 500Mhz, the P3 binary result at 2.3GHz approaches the result for the P4 binary at 1.8GHz. The fact that it doesn’t quite beat the 1.8GHz P4 binary result shows you the impressive results you get from optimising for the processor. A 500Mhz increase in clock speed is still not enough to catch the optimised version. The P4 binary result at 2.3GHz is simply the quickest we’ve yet seen at Hexus and beats all Athlon XP generated results on the P3 binary (remember the AXP can’t run the P4 binary at all) that we’ve seen.

Finally, we’ll check out 3DMark and Quake3 performance on the CPU. Quake3 loves running on the Pentium 4 processor so we should see some impressive results. A few people have noticed that our Q3 scores are a fair bit lower than other scores you might see around the web and that’s down to 2 things. Firstly, I always set all the rendering options within Quake3 to their maximum, most punishing values so that the system has the most work to do. Secondly the demo we run isn’t the Demo001 demo that most other sites use. We use the Four demo that’s in the latest point release for our testing.

First off, 3DMark. It’s a fair test of an entire system with some tests relying more on the CPU speed for their performance, some rely on memory bandwidth for more frames per second and some rely on pure GPU performance. Remember that my 3DMark results are generated by running the test 3 times and discarding the upper and lower score, leaving the middle one for our published results.

Pairing the 1.8 with a DX8 class GPU shows an impressive turn of speed. 7500+ in WindowsXP at default CPU and GPU clocks is quite impressive and shows that we’ll have good 1024×768 speed out of the box, the most common gaming resolution for most. The CPU and FSB clock boosts give us another 700 points effectively for free. The system would loop 3DMark 24/7 at the overclocked speed despite the lack of voltage.

Remember that memory clocks at 128MHz FSB were 128MHz due to the memory module being unable to run at FSB x 1.33 because we couldn’t increase memory voltage. Given a suitable stick of memory, the score would have increased another 2 or 3 hundred points, simply due to the increased memory bandwidth available.

Finally we can take a quick look at Quake3 on the CPU. We don’t usually look at Quake3 performance in our CPU reviews but the 2.3GHz pumps out some impressive figures that are nice to look at.

Looking at the graph, the results work their way down through the following resolutions: 1600×1200, 1280×1024, 1024×768. We can see that even at 1600×1200 the P4 runs Q3 incredibly well, even at 1.8GHz. Sub 100fps just doesn’t happen on the P4 anymore, even at high res, given a decent graphics card.

The extra 500Mhz gives us more than 20% more speed at 1024×768 and free speed is something we can’t argue with. The high multiplier and relatively low FSB increase still keeps the rest of the system relatively unstressed which is a bonus. 24/7 running at 128MHz on an i845D board is easy and the free speed is excellent. Memory voltage adjustment is really needed for optimimum performance however. Running the memory at sub PC2100 speeds (effectively unclocking it) isn’t the best thing to do. Remember to source a decent stick of memory for running at 1.33 x FSB on the i845D!

Performance Conclusion

It’s a shame that the Hexus CPU tests don’t really illustrate the performance increase that is possible due to the extra cache size. We’ll endeavour to change that in the future with some Linpack analysis and apps that illustrate the change. Look for that when we take a look at our next CPU.

As for the performance we can witness from our tests, it’s obvious that the free performance from the overclock is impressive. What endears me to overclocking the P4 is that the high multiplier doesn’t mean you overstress the rest of the system. Combined with the new Northwood’s propensity for overclocking without a voltage change and the result is a lot of fun.

Coming from tweaking AMD systems for the past year, the P4 is a breath of fresh air and enjoyable again.

The processor overclocked very well. It’s worth talking about CPU voltage here to clear up a few things people have noticed when moving to Intel from AND systems. Intel’s VRM spec for the P4 (the VRM governs CPU voltage) states that the CPU is booted with a Vmax voltage. This is the maximum voltage to be fed to the CPU to boot it properly and run at the designed speed.

On the majority of P4 motherboards out there, setting a CPU voltage in the BIOS is actually providing the Vmax voltage for the VRM and won’t be the constant running voltage of the CPU. Consequently, looking in the BIOS hardware monitoring or using a program like MBM will show a lower voltage than the Vmax value you set. It’s worth noting that this is correct behaviour and that your system isn’t faulty (like some have suggested).

On AMD systems, the voltage you set in the BIOS or via jumpers is usually the monitored voltage you get. This is down to slight changes in VRM specs between AMD and Intel systems and is just another side effect that tweakers will have to get used to when moving back and forth between systems.

This relates to this review because the reported voltage throughout the testing was a reported 1.44V. This is below the Vmax value the CPU needs and is a perfectly valid voltage for running the Northwood CPU’s. The VRM constantly adjusts running voltage as needed up to Vmax to keep the CPU running properly, maybe increasing voltage slightly under high load or reducing if the CPU is in one of it’s idle states.

Overall, performance was very acceptable and it ran all of our tests without hassle or slowdown and it currently resides in my system as I type this. Not quite the top x86 performer that money can buy but not slow either and the overclocking was excellent.

Conclusion

The move to 0.13 micron along with all the benefits including reduced cost, reduced power consumption, reduced heat and the overclocking possibilities make the Northwood a very attractive proposition at the moment. The cheaper CPU’s are excellent overclockers and the cost per unit is quite low for an Intel CPU although the 2.2 is still very costly.

Overall performance was high, cost is low for an Intel processor in the midrange and it was a pleasure testing it. It’ll stay in my machine for quite a while I think, displacing AMD for the time being.

Building the “Ultimate year 2000” Socket 423 RDRAM Pentium 4 System, Were they Really that Slow?

Mention of the Pentium 4 is commonly met with disgust from a certain portion of techies, the Pentium III was a far superior CPU they will tell you. Tech reviews from the time seem to affirm this and the early Pentium 4’s looked to be outperformed by both AMD’s Athlon XP chips and the older Intel Pentium 3 but how bad really was the early Pentium 4?

Its actually not that uncommon for a new CPU architecture to be outdone by the last models of the previous generation. There are several examples of this in the history of CPU development. For instance the AMD 386DX-40 was faster then the early 486’s and late 486 chips like the AMD 133mhz 5×86 (a 486 in all but name) easily outshines the original Pentiums. Why then is there such distaste for the first generation of “Willamette” core Pentium 4 CPUs? When Intel developed the Pentium 4 they used a new architecture called NetBurst which differed from the P6 architecture of the Pentium II and III before it. Many felt Intel would of done better to continue to evolve the P6 architecture and that NetBurst was good for gaining higher mhz numbers (which consumers paid attention to) but not giving better performance relative to those numbers. Once the Northwood cores hit the market in 2ghz+ speeds performance of the Pentium 4 became quite good but I believe most of the hate for the Pentium 4 is centered around those early Socket 423 Willamette core P4’s and these are what I wanted to test. Were the Willamette Pentiums 4s as bad as they say?

Before we start the article proper though I want to make a point very clear. This article is ONLY focusing on the Willamette based Pentium 4 as it operated with high end era correct parts within the end of 2000 and into 2001. It is not meant to represent the overall Pentium 4 line such as later Northwood, Prescott ect… chip revisions. It is also not meant to represent the full potential of the 1.5ghz Willamette CPU, as in using overpowered GPU’s and drivers from much later time periods as not to bottleneck the CPU. One example of this would be taking the machine below and installing a Geforce 6 or 7, a GPU released far after the 1.5ghz Willamette and then seeing how it performs. Also please keep in mind software optimized for the Pentium 4 and thus taking advantage of SSE2 instructions was not widely available in 2000/2001 which is the time period we are looking at for this build.

I frequently read about how the Pentium III easily stomped the Willamette based Pentium 4 CPUs in performance and I wanted to test this myself. To this end I decided to build the ultimate year 2000 Pentium 4 machine. The Pentium 4 did come out in late 2000 but probably wasn’t readily available to consumers until 2001 but I thought it would be fun create a year 2000 specific machine using the best parts that money could buy at the time. I’d like to think maybe it could of been a very expensive high end Christmas present assembled in December of 2000.

For a case I just went with a beige white case that I felt was very representative of the time. I kept things pretty simple with bay drives and limited my build to a pretty standard 1.44mb floppy drive as well as a DVD drive manufactured in 1999. At this point CD-ROM drives would of still been very common but I went with DVD since that would of been the high end and they were widely available in 2000. I believe this drive is a x12 speed but x16 speed drives were available. For a hard drive I’m using a ATA-100 40gb Quantum Fireball AS drive from early 2000.

Motherboard – Obviously the star of this build is going to be the socket 423 motherboard. Socket 423 was the original socket for the Pentium 4 and was a very short lived socket type only being in production a very short time before the Pentium 4 moved on to socket 478. Because of this, socket 423 boards tend to be pretty hard to find these days and can command a high price on the internet. Socket 423 supported the 1.3ghz to 2.0ghz Willamette based Pentium 4s. Intel quickly realized this socket was not adequate for higher clocked CPU’s so it was ditched fairly quickly for socket 478.

The motherboard I choose was the Legend QDI Plantinix 4x board largely on the bases of its availability to me to purchase and its unconventional look with RAM placement. The QDI Plantinix motherboard features RIMM slots for RDRAM (will get to that shortly) as well as an AGP x4 slot and an Intel 850 chipset.

1 ) Usually I mark the PSU connector as an afterthought but socket 423 is actually a bit picky about its power supplies. Socket 423 boards along with a standard 20 pin and 4 pin ATX +12 volt connector requires a supply with a 6 pin AUX power connector. It kind of looks like one half of an old AT power connector and plugs in next to the 20 pin connector.

This connector is necessary to properly power the socket 423 board and CPU. It’s not a very common connector to find on power supplies but I had the most luck searching under “Pentium 4 PSU” in eBay searches. These power supplies will all be fairly old at this point like mine and I had to go through 2 supplies to get a working unit. I failed to find an adapter to add an AUX connection to a more modern supply but they may exist.

2 ) CPU – Socket 423 supported all the Willamette CPUs which were produced in speeds of 1.3ghz to 2ghz. In 2000 only two Pentium 4s were available, the 1.4ghz and 1.5ghz version. The slowest 1.3ghz CPU interestingly was not released until very early January 2001. Originally I used a 1.3ghz CPU as seen in the image below just to see how slow the slowest P4 actually was but later decided to upgrade to the 1.5ghz model after discovering the performance difference in games was only 1-3 FPS in most cases and to make a truer year 2000 machine.

Except for the 200mhz speed difference and indication of clock speed on the chip the 1.3ghz CPU shown above and the 1.5ghz CPU installed on my motherboard look exactly the same. All Willamette P4s have 256kb of full speed  L2 cache on die which is the same as most of the Pentium III CPUs (exceptions being some of the Tualatin models and the early slot 1 Pentium III’s which had 512kb of half speed L2 cache). Later the L2 cache would be bumped up to 512kb on the Northwoods and even higher on later model P4 chips.

Socket 423 CPUs are rather large coming in a little bigger then a Coppermine Pentium III and much bigger then the later Northwood P4 as seen below

(CPU’s from left to right, Coppermine Pentium III, Willamette Pentium 4, Northwood Pentium 4)

3 ) RAM – Most socket 423 boards also used an unusual and (in the realm of consumer PC motherboards) short lived RAM type known as RDRAM or Rambus DRAM. RDRAM was expected to be the next PC memory standard replacing SDRAM  but was eventually beaten by DDR memory. In the days of the early Pentium 4 though Intel had licensed the use of RDRAM with its chipsets so RIMM slots (Rambus in-line Memory Module) showed up on many socket 423 boards. Also to note is that even though RDRAM is primarily associated with early Pentium 4 motherboards it can also be found on a few Pentium III PC’s such as the Dell Dimension XPS B733r.

RDRAM was both very expensive and ran quite hot. It was so pricey that Intel had to subsidies it and include it with certain motherboards. It also required a heat spreader be attached due to the heat it produced. It was found that the relatively small performance increase in some areas did not justify the cost and RDRAM was quickly replaced in the coming years by DDR which in general was faster, cheaper and ran cooler.

The Legend QDI Plantinix 4x board supports up to 2GB of RDRAM but since I’m going to be running Windows 98se I’m only going to a max of 512mb via four PC800 128mb sticks.

The Legend QDI Plantinix 4x has one of the most unusual RAM slot orientations I’ve seen in a post 1980’s motherboard with two slots being in a typical close side by side configuration close to the CPU and another slot spaced further away with a fourth slot being completely perpendicular to the other three. I’m not sure why they went with this setup other then maybe as a space saving feature. This board is also very picky about RAM as well as placement and sizes. RDRAM requires it be installed in sets of two and any unused slots require a “CRIMM” or dummy RAM be inserted as a terminator.

4 ) CNR Slot – CNR or Communications and Networking Riser was another Pentium 4 era slot that was quickly phased out of personnel computers. It was primarily intended for networking and audio cards.

5) IDE – Two ATA-100 IDE connectors for connecting IDE devices (two devices each) like hard drives and CD/DVD ROM drives.

6) Floppy – standard floppy drive connector.

Now for my sound and video card selections for the top of the line in 2000.

Sound – For a sound card I went with the Creative Sound Blaster Live! which was sort of the default sound card of the time.

The card I have installed in the Value version manufactured in 2000 but other then lacking an extended I/O connector and having color coded ports as opposed to gold is identical to the regular version. The Live! cards also supported EAX (Environmental Audio Extensions) 1.0 and 2.0 which many games of the time supported. An Aureal based card would of been another sound option but I feel the Live! cards are a little more compatible feature wise and more representative of 2000.

Video – Finally we have the graphics card. This was actually a very easy decision as the top dog of 2000 was easily the Geforce 2 Ultra.

The AGP x4 Geforce 2 Ultra was pretty much unanimously sighted as the most powerful graphics card of 2000 and in some circumstances even proved faster then the initial Geforce 3 card that preceded it. The Ultra came with 32mb of video memory and was clocked higher then the base model GF2 GTS and GF2 Pro beating out both of the competing Voodoo 5500 and Radeon DDR cards.

One thing to note is that finding a Geforce 2 Ultra can sometimes be a challenge since they can be sought after but also because certain other Geforce cards can almost look identical.

So with that out of the way lets look at some benchmarks to see if the Willamette Pentium 4 really does drag this beast of a year 2000 machine down. To compare I wanted to use a fairly contemporary machine so I choose my Dell Dimension 4100 from 2001 as the competition. This PC will be running the exact same video and sound card as the Pentium 4 PC. The CPU I have installed is a 1ghz Coppermine Pentium III released in 2000 and also using the old P6 CPU architecture.

Both machines are also using the same video drivers (version 45.23) as well as Power Strip 2.78 in order to disable Vsync. Driver version 45.23 are later drivers from around 2003 but unfortunately drivers from 2000 were giving me direct x errors and to be honest I didn’t feel like dealing with it. differences should be minor. Both machines are also running Windows 98se and using 512MB of RAM. I am also using “Optimal default” BIOS settings on both machines and have double checked to make sure L1 and L2 cache is enabled.

*UPDATE 2/7/18*

As I discovered my previous tests skewed the results in the Pentium 3’s favor I have redone all tests. Previous tests were done WITHOUT updated Chipset drivers (from 2000/2001) which greatly effected performance of the Pentium 4 therefore I have decided to rewrite the majority of the following section with the updated data. Chipset drivers ver. 3.20.1008 were installed on both the Pentium 4 and 3 boards for all of the following tests.

First test is with SisSoft 99 to benchmark both the SDRAM in the Pentium 3 machine and the RDRAM in the Pentium 4 PC.

Pentium 3 SDRAM – CPU = 296, FPU = 328

Pentium 4 RDRAM – CPU = 993, FPU = 219

Now SisSoft 99 is a little confusing on how it benchmarks the memory and it seperates it into a CPU and FPU score but the RDRAM clearly has a bandwidth advantage here as its “CPU” score is about triple that of the SDRAM in the P3

The next test I wanted to run was just a few synthetic benchmarks just to get a feel of the two systems. The benchmarks I ran were 3DMark 2000 and 20001se. All tests were run at a resolution of 1024 x 768 with 32 bit color. This was a high but reasonable resolution for the time.

Initial Benchmarks put the Pentium 4 ahead with a slight lead in 3D Mark 2000 and with a slightly larger lead in 3D Mark 2001se. Not looking good for the Pentium 3 so far.

Lastly I wanted to run some gaming benchmarks as I feel they give a better idea of performance so I ran seven different game benchmarks multiple times on each machine to get a average. I ran all these at 1024 x 768 with 32 bit color. I also used 3d acceleration where I could since these tests were of the systems as a whole and not just the CPU. With this in mind I also performed all benchmarks with sound enabled where the option existed. All results were rounded to the nearest whole number.

In three of the seven games the Pentium 4 beats the Pentium 3 if only just barely in some cases. In the more demanding Comanche 4 and Serious Sam: First Encounter we basically have a tie due to margin of error. Both of the older Quake games also results in a dead even tie.

When run at a lower resolution of 640 x 480 the Pentium 4 did pull ahead more so in several of the tests.

Keep in mind results may vary depending on the motherboard used. Now in truth the Willamette based Pentium 4’s may not deserve the hate they tend to get. In my experience the chips have been fairly stable and do run basic tasks just fine. They also when paired with a powerful graphics card of the time like the Geforce 2 tend to run games of the early 2000’s just fine on moderate settings or even high settings and resolutions depending on the game. The Pentium III on the other hand just tends to do tasks a little worse. Though results may be quite improved with Tualatin based Pentium III’s with double the L2 cache and 400mhz more clock speed then my 1ghz Coppermine CPU.

One important thing that is worth noting about the early Pentium 4’s is that software in the early 2000’s had yet to take advantage of the P4’s SSE2 instructions and thus in the early days of the 2000’s software was not optimized for the Pentium 4 CPU. There is also the matter of controversy of the time around Intel fudging the benchmark results to favor the Pentium 4 over the Athlon and Pentium III which eventually led to a class action lawsuit though these admittedly underhanded doings did not seem to involve game benchmarks. In the end though there is a reason Intel quickly abandoned socket 423.

Other games tested were GTA III, Halo and Far Cry. GTA III ran at a pretty consistent 30+ FPS when resolution was brought down to 800 x 600 x 32. Far Cry ran more or less fine at 1024 x 768 on medium settings at around 30 FPS with dips in the mid to low 20’s when several enemies were on screen or there was a large explosion. Turning the Resolution down to 800 x 600 x 32 gave better results with FPS hitting as high as the 90’s at points and rarely dipping into the mid 20’s when a lot was going on. Halo seemed to be playable at 1024 x 768 with medium settings but suffered lower FPS rates but at 800 x 600 with textures and particle effects set on high it was perfectly playable. Quake III even at 1024 x 768 x 32 pulled a consistent 90+ FPS. A more powerful graphics card will obviously improve results but is out of the scope of a “year 2000 build”.

Despite the results favoring the Pentium 4 you were likely better off either sticking to your Pentium III or going the AMD route with the Athlon XP especially considering the high price of the early P4s. I also would of felt pretty burned when Intel dropped socket 423 for socket 478 after only a year give or take leaving socket 423 owners with not much of an upgrade path. I don’t feel the Pentium 4 really became competitive until the later Northwood cores started clocking over 2ghz and especially with the 2.5ghz hyperthreading models. There IS a noticeable performance boost over the 1ghz P3 but it’s not quite as much as I would expect from 500mhz more clock speed and a brand new CPU architecture and I think this is what let most people down. It’s not that the Pentium 4 was slower overall then a similarly equipped Pentium 3 build (if your PC was properly optimized) but that it wasn’t that much faster, at least not enough to justify the costs. I’d certainly be interested in how much difference a 2ghz Willamette makes against the Pentium III or even an early Northwood against a 1ghz Pentium III but that’s a matter for another article.