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Ace's Hardware thoughts on the Precott P4
[link=http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000461]Ace's Hardware: Prescott let us talk performance[/link]
[blockquote]To refresh your memory let me reiterate [link=http://www.aceshardware.com/read_news.jsp?id=75000428]a post that I published in September 2003[/link]. Prescott is basically a Northwood Pentium 4 with the following improvements:
<ul>
<li> bigger D-L1 cache (16 KB instead of 8 KB) & L2-cache (1 MB instead of 512 KB) .. No comments necessary
<li> 4x Improved Clock Distribution (compared to Northwood) for better Frequency Scaling
<li> Automated design of the functional blocks for better clockscaling
<li> Improved Imul latency : Northwood/Willamette do their integer multiplications on the FPU, and the big latency is due routing the data between integer and FP datapaths. Prescott has a dedicated integer multiplier. (Thanks goes to Heikki Kultala).
<li> Prescott New Instructions (SSE-3), which will not improve performance at the launch (needs optimized software).
<li> Additional WC Buffers. Instead of sending small pieces of data to the AGP videocard, these pieces of data are stored together in buffers, and send through in one big burst. This helps to preserve FSB bandwidth as the bandwidth of the FSB is more efficiently used (less overhead from one big burst than from many small ones)
<li> Improved Pre-Fetcher Branch Predictor. I did not get much info on this but it seems that the buffers have been made bigger so the branch predictor will be able to cope better with more then one thread.
<li> Improved Hyperthreading: two new instructions: Monitor and Wait, which will only improve performance on recompiled software.
</ul>
we can add two more, one being a fact and another being a rumor:
<ul>
<li> longer pipeline (fact)
<li> Higher L2-cache latency ? (rumor) </ul>
[/blockquote]
read the rest [link=http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000461]here[/link]
[blockquote]To refresh your memory let me reiterate [link=http://www.aceshardware.com/read_news.jsp?id=75000428]a post that I published in September 2003[/link]. Prescott is basically a Northwood Pentium 4 with the following improvements:
<ul>
<li> bigger D-L1 cache (16 KB instead of 8 KB) & L2-cache (1 MB instead of 512 KB) .. No comments necessary
<li> 4x Improved Clock Distribution (compared to Northwood) for better Frequency Scaling
<li> Automated design of the functional blocks for better clockscaling
<li> Improved Imul latency : Northwood/Willamette do their integer multiplications on the FPU, and the big latency is due routing the data between integer and FP datapaths. Prescott has a dedicated integer multiplier. (Thanks goes to Heikki Kultala).
<li> Prescott New Instructions (SSE-3), which will not improve performance at the launch (needs optimized software).
<li> Additional WC Buffers. Instead of sending small pieces of data to the AGP videocard, these pieces of data are stored together in buffers, and send through in one big burst. This helps to preserve FSB bandwidth as the bandwidth of the FSB is more efficiently used (less overhead from one big burst than from many small ones)
<li> Improved Pre-Fetcher Branch Predictor. I did not get much info on this but it seems that the buffers have been made bigger so the branch predictor will be able to cope better with more then one thread.
<li> Improved Hyperthreading: two new instructions: Monitor and Wait, which will only improve performance on recompiled software.
</ul>
we can add two more, one being a fact and another being a rumor:
<ul>
<li> longer pipeline (fact)
<li> Higher L2-cache latency ? (rumor) </ul>
[/blockquote]
read the rest [link=http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000461]here[/link]
0
Comments
It is about time that Intel beefed up the math unit though.
Prescott 2.8/800 fsb is $240
Prescott 3.0/800 fsb is $312
Prescott 3.2/800 fsb is $393
Prescott 3.4/800 fsb is $582
That's one of only few that have listed them here and i expect those prices to be a little lower when the cpu's are available in a week or 2.
The AMD 64 3200+ price was slaughtered yesterday and landed on $394
I think we will se a war between the Prescott 3.2 and Amd 64 3200+