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"Pentium 4 core? What's that?"

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Sat 06/11/04 at 13:57
Regular
"where's my tag?"
Posts: 510
Hi,

I'm new to making PCs and the first thing I'm thinking about is the Pentium cores. My mobo is an Intel D875PBZ and I'm not sure which Pentium 4 chips will work with the board. The manuel doesn't seem to mention cores and I was wondering if a Prescott would be fine?

How many cores in the P4 range are there, and is the latest Prescotts simply a label for Intel's best P4s? I'm not really sure what core my mobo supports...

Oh, and for your info I'm looking to get one between the speeds of 3GHz and the highest the board will allow (3.6GHz?).
Mon 08/11/04 at 10:09
"I love yo... lamp."
Posts: 19,577
Coin wrote:
> What's the actual difference between AMD's and Intel's? Last I
> heard, Intel were king of the roost.

Intel haven't been king of the roost since around 1999.

Intel processors go for high clock speeds, but an inefficient architecture. They have long pipelines to allow them to ramp up the clock speed. The P4 also has like a half speed FPU. AMD have shorter pipelines, meaning it is hard to ramp them up as high in terms of clock speed, but AMD do more per cycle, 9 instructions to Intel's 6 if I remember correctly. Which is why, clock for clock, AMD are far more powerful. It is also the reason why a 2.2 GHz processor is labelled a 3200XP.

AMD processors have far stronger FPUs as they run at full speed. This means that programs that use floating point operations, such as games, many science and mathematical programs all benefit from being run on AMD processors. Until the Athlon 64 came out, Pentium 4's were better at audio/video encoding. This was due in part to the high core speed, but more to do with the SSE2 instructions that the Intel processors had and Athlon XP's didn't have. The Athlon 64 DOES have SSE2, so most of that lead in encoding is now gone.

But AMD all the way for games.

Admittedly though, this is all to be taken in context. We aren't talking vast differences. A few FPS here and there, a couple of seconds on the time taken to rip an MP3. But for those who really care about that little bit, like Alistair, cookie monster and myself etc, it does make a difference.
Mon 08/11/04 at 07:27
Regular
"Bicycle"
Posts: 4,899
Good.

I took music instead.
Mon 08/11/04 at 07:15
Regular
"Sorry about speelin"
Posts: 585
Yes you can, but IT GCSE is crap, i tok it and its all databases, boring
Sun 07/11/04 at 12:18
Regular
"Bicycle"
Posts: 4,899
Argh. See, this is why I should have taken IT GCSE...

But I can still take ITC A-Level without ITC-GCSE, right?
Sun 07/11/04 at 12:10
Regular
Posts: 10,364
Architecture.

Intel chips and AMD chips have different aspects from each other.

If you do Computing up until A2 level, you'll get teached the basic differences, and about the inside of the CPU itself.
Sun 07/11/04 at 00:43
Regular
"Bicycle"
Posts: 4,899
What's the actual difference between AMD's and Intel's? Last I heard, Intel were king of the roost.
Sun 07/11/04 at 00:20
Regular
Posts: 10,489
Don't buy the 3.4GHZ Prescott, what massive mistake that was. Thankfully someone bought it on eBay for £60 less than what I paid so I didn't lose a hell of a lot as it turned out.

The core runs at 103 which is nearly 40-50 more than the Northwood, Intel then compensate the heat by lowering the clock speed load when it gets too hot.

A serious mistake. I will always stick to AMD from now on, far better from my experience.
Sat 06/11/04 at 19:22
Regular
"where's my tag?"
Posts: 510
Notorious Biggles wrote:
>if you can find a 3.4 GHz Northwood, go for it. Northwoods
> are faster clock for clock than Prescotts, run much cooler, draw less
> power, don't have compatibility issues with boards. All round better
> processors. 3.2 GHz Northwoods are fairly easy to get, the 3.4 GHz
> was a bit rarer.

Northwood it is then. I think I've found a place that sells the 3.4 model, but it's OEM. Do you know EXACTLY what comes with the retail version so I could buy things separate? I know an Intel heatsink normally comes with them but does anything else? Maybe a manual or extra wires?
Sat 06/11/04 at 14:15
"I love yo... lamp."
Posts: 19,577
Oh and for the Pentium 4 there was another core, the Williamette, but you won't find it around these days. It was older and considerably slower. It was also socket 423, not 478, if memory serves me correctly. So it wouldn't fit anyway.
Sat 06/11/04 at 14:14
"I love yo... lamp."
Posts: 19,577
Do a google search. I don't know myself, but quite a few boards had issues with the amount of power the Prescott cores used. To be honest, if you can find a 3.4 GHz Northwood, go for it. Northwoods are faster clock for clock than Prescotts, run much cooler, draw less power, don't have compatibility issues with boards. All round better processors. 3.2 GHz Northwoods are fairly easy to get, the 3.4 GHz was a bit rarer.

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