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Intel Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition Review October 31, 2004 |
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Summary: Today Intel introduces two new products -- the 925XE chipset, which features a faster 1066MHz bus -- and the first CPU to support it: the Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition. Is the new clock speed and bus enough to overtake AMD? See how the new chip performs in this review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 12 ) |
But we’re a gaming outlet, after all, and more often than not the most demanding games are limited by graphics, not processor performance, right? Well, Intel isn’t really faring well when you take those low-res tests out of the equation, either. The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is currently priced with an MSRP of $999 and, coupled with a 925X motherboard, requires a pair of new DDR2 memory modules as well. Contrast that with the Athlon 64 family, which consists of several chips that perform at least on par with the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, and for significantly less money.
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Of course Intel knows it’s in a sticky situation, which is probably one reason we’re already seeing early information on upcoming dual-core architectures, potentially for release midway through next year. Even for the time being, though, Intel is pushing to enable more performance with the puzzle pieces that it has on the table. In other words, it’s eking out whatever performance is available from the old Northwood core and a revision of its 925X chipset called 925XE.
Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition
Thus, it should come as little surprise that the latest flagship in Intel’s Extreme Edition family is a simple tweak of the 3.4GHz part that came before it. Rather than employing a 200MHz front side bus (quad-pumped, if you remember the original terminology, to run at 800MHz) and a hardwired 17x clock multiplier, the new chip uses a 266MHz bus (quad-pumped to 1066MHz) and a 13x multiplier. A simple shuffling of bus speeds and multipliers, if you will.
| More 3.46GHz Extreme Edition | Page:: ( 2 / 12 ) |
More 3.46GHz Extreme Edition
Naturally, the processor architecture’s other features remain identical. The Northwood core sports 8KB of L1 data cache, 512KB of L2 cache, and a 2MB L3 on top of that. Packed with 178 million transistors in a 237 square-millimeter package, Intel rates the chip with a thermal design power of up to 110.7 watts running at 1.6V. It doesn’t support SSE3, it doesn’t come with 64-bit extensions, there’s no such thing as SpeedStep on the desktop yet, and you shouldn't expect much overclocking headroom from the 130nm architecture that has already been abandoned in favor of the 90nm, hyper-pipelined Prescott.
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Like the 3.4GHz LGA775 chip that emerged in June, this 3.46GHz part works exclusively with the new processor interface. Of course, because it also employs a different front side bus setting, it won’t function properly on older 915P and 925X motherboards.
The 925XE Express Chipset
Instead, you’ll need a motherboard based on Intel’s 925XE chipset, an updated version of its predecessor that adds support for a 1066MHz front side bus. The benefit of 925XE is that it establishes parity between the processor and memory buses, both of which are now able to transfer up to 8.5 GBps of information. The higher front-side bus speed also sets the stage for Pentium 4 processors to come – some as soon as this year – based on the Prescott core and running at 1066MHz as well.
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It doesn’t do much else beyond the features introduced with Intel’s 925X, though. That’s not to say it’s a bad chipset. In fact, Intel’s 925X was the first core logic with support for PCI Express, comprehensive Serial ATA functionality, a high-definition audio standard, and DDR2 memory. To the contrary, 925X is very much robust and the 925XE takes that excellent feature set a step further with additional performance and support for lower-latency memory (DDR2-533 CAS3). Even still, that doesn’t change the fact that you’ll need a new motherboard to support the faster FSB speed.
| Pricing, Overclocking, and the Future | Page:: ( 3 / 12 ) |
Pricing
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Pricing on the 925XE chipset also remains the same to motherboard manufacturers - $50. Intel doesn’t publish MSRP pricing on its motherboards, but representatives at the company claim street pricing should hover in the neighborhood of $180-$190.
Overclocking
As far as we know, this will be the last processor manufactured on the Gallatin core, a derivative of the 130nm Northwood intended primarily for workstations and servers. That’s generally an indication that we’re seeing the limits of a given lithography process, and indeed, Intel’s move to the 31-stage Prescott at 90nm for its desktop products seems to confirm this.
Consequentially, you really shouldn’t expect much out of the 3.46GHz Extreme Edition in the way of overclocking. It’s fairly overextended as it is, and even a meager five percent boost using Intel’s Burn-In mode failed to yield stable operation.
AMD makes it possible to work around that sort of problem by unlocking its clock multipliers. However, we confirmed that the Extreme Edition is locked fast, allowing no increase or decrease of multiplier vales in order to tinker with bus speeds.
The Future
The most positive message we can relay here is that there looks to be hope for the Extreme Edition family in the form of a new micro-architecture and core designation. Rumor has it that later this year, Intel will follow its 3.46GHz with a 3.73GHz Extreme Edition built using the 90nm process and the 31-stage execution pipeline. We’re expecting to see a 2MB L2 cache rather than the L3, the NX-bit in hardware, which AMD refers to as Enhanced Virus Protection, SSE3, and an enhanced version of SpeedStep, similar to Demand-Based Switching (DBS) on the Xeon. With more value-added features and seeimingly augmented performance, this new Extreme Edition could be just what Intel needs to get it back into a once-competitive match-up.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 4 / 12 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition (1066MHz bus)
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition (800MHz bus)
Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz; 90nm; 1MB L2)
Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz; 90nm; 1MB L2)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (939)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 (939)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (939)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (939)
Intel D925XECV2 925XE Motherboard
Intel D925XCV 925E Motherboard
MSI 7025E nForce3 Ultra Socket 939 Motherboard
1GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 DDR400 Pro Series Memory (2x512MB)
1GB Corsair 3-3-3-8 DDR2-533 Pro Series Memory (2x512MB)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP 8x
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI Express x16
Detonator 66.81 Beta with support for PCI Express cards
34GB Western Digital Raptor (10,000RPM, 8MB cache)
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
DirectX 9.0c
Desktop resolution 1024x768, 32-bit color, 85Hz refresh
All power saving options were turned off, as were the Automatic Update and System Restore services. Graphics options under the ‘Performance’ tab were all disabled for maximum performance.
Note also that extremely low latency memory modules were used for both platforms. The AMD64 system used 1T command rates, while the Pentium 4 machine employed 2T command rates.
Note also that we’ve dropped both Futuremark benchmarks from our suite. It’s difficult to defend the use of a synthetic test that contradicts 100 percent of the real-world metrics to which it’s compared, and both PCMark04 and 3DMark05 did just that, limiting their usefulness as synthetic tests.
Benchmarks
PC Magazine Business Winstone 2004 v.1.0.1
PC Magazine Content Creation Winstone 2004 v.1.0.1
SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP2
Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2004 v.3323
Id Software Doom 3
Crytek Far Cry v.1.1
Valve Software Counter-Strike: Source
| PC Magazine Benchmarks | Page:: ( 5 / 12 ) |
Content Creation Winstone 2004 and Business Winstone 2004
Notes
Running a faster front side bus speed gives Intel a minimal performance boost in Content Creation 2004. However, the difference isn’t enough even to catch AMD’s Athlon 64 3800+.
The same holds true in Business Winstone 2004, where gaining 60MHz and more memory bandwidth makes a measurable difference to the Pentium 4, but not enough to affect the standings.
Then again, the argument can be made that Business Winstone, featuring tests that rely heavily on user input, doesn’t necessarily reflect performance differences between the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64.
Results from the Prescott core, are more promising for Intel. In Content Creation 2004, the 3.6GHz processor beats even this latest Extreme Edition. When Intel transitions the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition to 90nm, does away with the L3 cache, and adds an extra megabyte of L2, the platform will undoubtedly improve its position in these tests.
| SiSoft Sandra 2004 | Page:: ( 6 / 12 ) |
SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP2
Notes
Ever since AMD’s Athlon 64 emerged, the memory bandwidth benchmarks have been very one-sided. The inclusion of an onboard memory controller gives the AMD64 initiative a tremendous advantage in reducing latency and maximizing available throughput from DDR400.
Intel’s move to DDR2 earlier this year indicates a desire to push forward with higher front side and memory bus speeds, since the memory technology is designed to scale higher than standard DDR. This first example of that upward push, to a 1066MHz bus, actually yields favorable results for Intel. The 6.4 GBps theoretical ceiling is raised to 8.5 GBps, and real-world throughput jumps about 800 MBps as a result. While it’s still below AMD’s year-old design, the 925XE chipset edges closer than the 925X before it.
We’ll take a closer look into the effect on real-world performance to determine if the healthy boost really does anything.
| Unreal Tournament 2004 | Page:: ( 7 / 12 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004 v.3323
Notes
The low-resolution tests of Unreal Tournament 2004 show that the new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz picks up a couple of percentage points over its predecessor, but not nearly enough to draw even with the Athlon 64 3800+, much less AMD’s flagship Athlon 64 FX-55.
There’s nearly no improvement at 1600x1200 and the 3.46GHz Extreme Edition still trails the entire line of Athlon 64 chips tested. Then again, the difference is substantially less and you’d be hard-pressed to find any real difference between the two in an actual gaming environment.
| Doom 3 | Page:: ( 8 / 12 ) |
Doom 3
Notes
Intel does a little better in Doom 3 with the new Extreme Edition, which manages to beat the Athlon 64 3800+ at 800x600, though still behind AMD’s other contenders.
The jump to 1600x1200 helps Intel even more, allowing the 3.46GHz chip to surpass the Athlon 64 4000+ by a miniscule frame and a half per second. At such a high resolution, it doesn’t matter if you have a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 550 or an Athlon 64 FX-55, though. Graphics performance is unquestionably holding back even the high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra.
| Far Cry | Page:: ( 9 / 12 ) |
Far Cry v.1.1
Notes
Far Cry goes to the Athlon 64 at 800x600, with the Intel 3.46GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition falling under AMD’s 3800+.
The more realistic setting for gaming enthusiasts with cutting edge-gear is a much closer call. Intel’s top dog finishes right up there with Athlon 64 FX, but again, that’s because we’re seeing the result of a graphics bottleneck. If you enable 2x anti-aliasing, you’ll bring the score down further and continue to normalize the benchmark results.
| Counter-Strike: Source | Page:: ( 10 / 12 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source
Notes
Brandon observed a while back that Valve made a change to the beta of Counter-Strike: Source and completely threw off the game’s scaling characteristics. We noticed that scaling is still somewhat screwy in our Athlon 64 FX-55 review, even with the final version, and we see the trend continuing. It doesn’t matter if you’re at 800x600 or 1600x1200. Both resolutions reflect a similar spread between the contenders involved and only drop two or three frames moving from low-res to high.
How does the 3.46GHz Extreme Edition fare in the midst of all of that? Not well. While it doesn’t lag behind any of the Athlon 64 processors by a significant margin, it does trail them all and cost more, to boot. That’s not saying much for the value currently offered by the Extreme Edition.
| Ballistics Report: Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz | Page:: ( 11 / 12 ) |
Pros:
Performance: Intel’s Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.46GHz is the fastest desktop processor that you can buy…from Intel. Regardless of where it falls in the perpetual face-off with AMD, those who limit themselves to Intel’s wares need look no further than this processor.
Exclusivity: Do you mean to tell me that people buy Ferraris for something other than to look good driving down Sunset? The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is a rare and expensive bird. Those who buy one are either trying to impress their friends or are genuinely wealthy.
1GHz Front Side Bus: Technology marches on; this time, in the form of a faster front side bus setting. Theoretical bandwidth between processor and memory rises from 6.4 GBps to 8.5 GBps, real world throughput correspondingly increases about 17 percent, and the overall picture of performance in games and content creation applications is affected only slightly.
Cons:
Price: It seems like there are a lot of expensive processors nowadays, but Intel’s Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz takes the cake at $999. If you were looking exclusively at Pentium 4’s, a la Dell, that’d still be a lot to ask. But when you venture out into Athlon 64 territory, one thousand dollars simply isn’t worth the price of admission.
Another Platform?: Wasn’t it just a few months ago that the 925X chipset made it major-league debut? Though the processors and motherboards will be priced identically to the 925X and 3.4GHz Extreme Edition, most enthusiasts would have a hard time justifying a new motherboard just to enable the 1066MHz front side bus.
The AMD Factor: As mentioned, the 3.46GHz Pentium 3 Extreme Edition is the fastest process that you can get from Intel. But it isn’t the fastest processor, period. AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-55 maintains that honor, possibly through the end of 2004, unless Intel’s next Extreme Edition product is able to catch up.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 12 / 12 ) |
Intel Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition