'Prescott' reveals its process problems

Unknown

Two Asian websites over the last few days have published information that indicates Intel might have a lot more work to do if they have any hope of meeting their performance claims.

[blockquote]The articles appear to be based on two separate steppings of Prescott CPUs. The notes on the compterdiy site indicate that the new Pentium 4 core (Prescott), may be running 14 per cent slower than the older core (Northwood), indicating that it could have between six and eight extra pipeline stage. Each stage could gobble up about two per cent of performance.
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[link=http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13803]The full report[/link]

MJO

I read that intel had increased the pipeline to 30 stages compared to 20 in the Northwood.

The Prescott will be slower compared to a Northwood at the samme clockspeed.

Thrax

Aaaah. I am amused.

Vapourware indeed.

MJO

Here is more info concerning pipelines and Prescotts.

http://www.overclockers.com/articles940/

Yes, extending the pipeline will hurt performance. If you want a ballpark figure for the moment, figure a Prescott will do about 10% less on average clock-for-clock than a Northwood.

Remember to read page 2 as well.
It seems that AMD's marketing isn't the best.
And that could benefit Intel.

drasnor

I need to get back to trying to scale my P3's into the 1.5 GHz range.

-drasnor

muddocktor

drasnor, the Tualatins can do that fairly easily and run well. I just wish someone made a desktop board that would run the Pentium M procs.

Thrax

Supposedly the Banias architecture is to be the firm basis of the next iteration in the Xeon family.

drasnor

muddocktor wrote:

drasnor, the Tualatins can do that fairly easily and run well. I just wish someone made a desktop board that would run the Pentium M procs.

I know, but you see I don't _have_ any Tualatins. However, I _do_ have a couple of Coppermines with 11x multipliers. Unfortunately, it's hard to mount a monster heatsink on a slocket. I really need a dual P3 board.

I hear you on the Pentium M's. They're in micro-Socket 478 form factor, so all you REALLY need is 1) an Upgradeware or Powerleap adapter that doesn't exist yet and 2) a shweet P4 board with a BIOS that can see a Pentium M.

Rumor has it that the Pentium M is a shrunk Tualatin. If so, I want a Socket370 adapter too, and a new beta BIOS for the P2B-B.

-drasnor

Straight_Man

The only problem with adapters, is the rate at which data flows in the mobo. The mobos and RAM support limits will cripple the gain from adapter in most cases.

Look at a Willamette.... Shorter pipes if you want shorter pipes. OR, get a laptop mobo and stick in a desktop case-- since the stepdown is thermal, you should be able to cool the mobo enough to keep from getting a thermal stepdown.

John.

drasnor

Ageek wrote:

The only problem with adapters, is the rate at which data flows in the mobo. The mobos and RAM support limits will cripple the gain from adapter in most cases.

That's true for the extremely improbable hypothetical Socket370 adapter. If we're just adapting micro Socket478 to full Socket478, it shouldn't be a problem at all. Banias is a 400MHz FSB chip, so unless it breaks from Intel's recent habit of bumping the numbers its really only a 100MHz part. Boards based on the i875 or i865 chipset support up to 800MHz FSB, some capable of running the RAM asynch at those speeds and the bus at 400 or 533, so they shouldn't have any trouble keeping a Pentium M fed.

On the note of laptop motherboards, ryko sent me this PM with a couple of links you'll want to check out:
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=306
http://www.radisys.com/oem_products/boards_blades.cfm?FF=Motherboards
I'm going to go ahead and post them, but you can credit him for finding these. I know what I'M using for my HTPC project!

-drasnor