More Northwood changes

Voltage and motherboards

Thanks to its smaller 0.13-micron manufacturing process, Northwood chips run at 1.5V (versus 1.75V in Willamette processors). In fact, power consumption drops from 70W with Willamette to 49.8W with Northwood. As a result, Northwood chips run cooler than their predecessors at the same clock speed. When overclocked however, we had no problems pushing our Northwood chips to temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As we've discussed in previous articles, all Northwood chips utilize Intel's 478-pin microPGA form factor. Older Willamette chips were built with 423 pins, and as far as we know, no plans are in the works for an adapter to convert 423 pin processors to fit in 478-pin motherboards. Likewise, no announcements have been made concerning an adapter for Northwood chips to run in 423-pin motherboards. In anticipation of the switch, Intel began producing 478-pin Willamette processors; our 2.0GHz Pentium 4 chip is one such example. Motherboard manufacturers have also been producing 478-pin motherboards for quite some time; we used our four-month old ABIT TH7II-RAID for this review.

In order for your Socket 478 i850 motherboard to support these newer Northwood chips, you'll need to download the latest BIOS release for your motherboard. In most cases 845 motherboards with DDR support already support Northwood processors, although VIA P4X266 and SDRAM-based 845 users will also need to update their BIOS for Northwood support.

Buying a Northwood processor

Physically, our Northwood chips are practically indistinguishable from Socket 478 Willamette Pentium 4 processors. To prevent confusion, Intel is designating the 2.0GHz Northwood processor as "2.0A GHz". As of right now, all processors above 2.0GHz are Northwood chips, so if you're at the store in line to purchase a 2.2GHz Pentium 4, it's guaranteed to be a Northwood processor. However, if yields of Northwood chips are insufficient to meet demand we wouldn't be surprised to see Willamette chips in excess of 2.0GHz creep out, especially in OEM systems from vendors such as Dell and Gateway. Historically, this has happened before, so the best way to ensure that you're getting a Northwood processor is to look at the processor voltage, and if you aren't able to determine that, the processor's L2 cache size. If it's 1.5V and/or 512KB, you're guaranteed to be getting a Northwood chip.

Officially, Intel is pricing the 2.0GHz Northwood chip at $364 in quantities of 1,000, 2.2GHz Northwood processors are priced at $562. Later this month Intel will be adjusting prices on the rest of its Pentium 4 processors to fall in line with today's Northwood release. Expect street prices to be a bit higher than that at first, with prices coming down as supply catches up with demand. Both processors are in full production and Intel expects immediate availability in both retail and OEM channels.