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Processors Toolkit

Intel Prescott: the benchmarks

Kai Schmerer ZDNet Germany

Published: 02 Feb 2004

Intel’s new ‘Prescott’ Pentium 4 has double the L1 and L2 cache of its ‘Northwood’ predecessor. An extended 31-stage pipeline accounts for the fact that the new chip is mostly slower than the CPU it replaces.

Although Intel’s new processor has larger L1 and L2 caches and an enhanced set of multimedia instructions (SSE3), the company has resisted the temptation to call the Prescott chip the ‘Pentium 5’. You can identify a Prescott Pentium 4 by the ‘E’ that follows the clock speed -- as in, ‘Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology 3.40E GHz’.

There are four new Pentium 4 processors with the Prescott core (see table below). However, the 3.4GHz version will not be available in large quantities at launch, which is why Intel did not send this variant to testers. A 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with the older Northwood core will also available -- although, again, it’s not currently available for test.

Intel is also releasing another variant of the gaming-orientated Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, a 3.4GHz processor that will cost nearly $1,000. This Northwood-core chip has little relevance to business users, though: for more than the double cost of an equivalent desktop processor, the Extreme Edition delivers only 10 to 15 per cent more performance.

Intel's new processors

CPU	FSB	HT support	Price

Pentium 4 2.8E GHz (Prescott)	800MHz	yes	$178
Pentium 4 3.0E GHz (Prescott)	800MHz	yes	$218
Pentium 4 3.2E GHz (Prescott)	800MHz	yes	$278
Pentium 4 3.4E GHz (Prescott)	800MHz	yes	$417
Pentium 4 3.4 GHz (Northwood)	800MHz	yes	$417
Pentium 4 EE 3.4 GHz (Northwood)	800MHz	yes	$999