Intel Prescott vs. Northwood

Rob Babcock · « **on:** 22 Feb 2004, 07:49 am »

Alright, I'm reading mixed reviews on this one: you'd think the Prescott with its 1 MB cache would smoke the Northwood, but I'm seeing quite a few people saying it's just hype. Worse yet, I'm seeing reports that it runs as hot as a waffle iron.

Whadday you guys think about this? It the Prescott a good step up or should I stick with the good ol' reliable Northwood?

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #1 on:** 24 Feb 2004, 04:19 am »

C'mon! This site's filled with computer geeks! Someone must know something!

bubba966 · « **Reply #2 on:** 24 Feb 2004, 04:35 am »

Well, don't ask me any Intel questions. I've been virtually Intel free for 10 years...

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #3 on:** 24 Feb 2004, 07:49 am »

So I take it you're running an Athlon? I'm considering a Clawhammer for my next DIY PC- it's a pretty badass proc, although probably a lot more than I need.

As I understand it, the newer Athlons own the Intel CPUs where graphics and such are concerned (ie for gaming), but that the Pentium has a bit more raw power for cerain types of things (eg., burning CD-Rs that need normalizing, heavy CPU calculations like Norton AV, etc).

I'm probably going to build a 2nd computer pretty soon- it's a drag having to sit and twiddle my thumbs while I'm burning a CD-R or DVD-R. Although I guess I could spend my time listening to my $10K worth of audio gear!

bubba966 · « **Reply #4 on:** 24 Feb 2004, 07:51 am »

Have got a dual Athlon MP board right now. And have been running AMD's for almost 10 years.

Why don't you go for an Opteron? That ought to do "non-gaming" stuff extremely well.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #5 on:** 24 Feb 2004, 08:49 am »

Simple ignorance. I know the Intel chipsets, procs & boards pretty well, but I know very little about AMD's. Guess I'll have to get off AC & do some research.

bob82274 · « **Reply #6 on:** 11 Jul 2004, 08:01 pm »

Rob you have probably found all that you need to know on this topic but I guess I can help out some here:

General rule of thumb:

Below 3.2 GHz stick with the Northwood C version of the core. I have had a 2.8C for over a year and its great. Be careful if you do buy a 2.8 core because there are the B, C, and E versions (Northwood 533 FSB, Northwood 800 FSB, Prescott) of the core.

Above 3.2 GHz go with the Prescott.

Now for some more in depth info about Prescott. Its true that it is running hot as hell. Some are consuming 100 Watts of power which is absurd. It needs a massive heat sink and fan combo and the only place for that heat to go is to your office/room. Nothing like a space heater huh.

Even though the Prescott has a larger L2 cache it also has what is called a longer pipeline. For one instruction to be processed on a northwood core it must be analyzed by 20 steps where as an instruction on the prescott core must be analyzed by 31 steps. A similar thing happened several years ago in the move from the Pentium III (10 steps) to the Pentium 4 (Williamette core 20 steps). A 1GHz PIII could outperform a 1.5 GHz P4 because of this. But these extra steps (in addition to smaller transistors) allow you to increase the clock speed of your processor. It was increased so that Prescott could acheive an eventual top speed of 4-5 GHz. Northwood will top out at about 3.6-3.8 GHz.

So below the 3.2 GHz mark the long pipeline proves to be too much overhead for it but above that mark the large cache helps reduce the effects of the extended pipeline. This is quite a bit simplified but its the general idea.

If you want a LOT more info then i suggest you read this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956

As for me... well I just started the process of building a second machine because I want a Linux Box for e-mail, web, and coding. I'll be using an Athlon XP-Mobile processor. It uses a lot less energy which translates to less heat. It will work fine in a desktop but is designed for laptops.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #7 on:** 11 Jul 2004, 08:16 pm »

Actually I was just discussing this exact topic with someone a couplel days ago. Thanks- that pretty much is what I was wondering.

With a new gen of Prescott 3.2+ out there, the prices of the Northwood 2.8 & 3.0 are extremely good right now.

Redbone · « **Reply #8 on:** 11 Jul 2004, 08:34 pm »

I've got the the Northwood 3.0 (P4 800 fsb) in a DIY PC with a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP system board. If you can get the P4 at a good price I would go with it.

Something that makes a HUGE difference in speed is the hard drives. I went with a dual SATA RAID setup using 10,000 rpm Western Digital drives. The on chip setup is better than using a PCI Card for SATA, and Intel finally worked the bugs out of their interface. It is a bit tricky to set up originally, but after that it is transparent. This machine is blazing fast. It boots in about 10 seconds and almost all apps at least initialize instantaneously.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #9 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 04:40 am »

I'm not fond of WD hard drives. All the ones I've used are really noisy. When I build my next PC I'll probably get a pair of 120 or 160 Gig SATA's from Seagate. I've had great luck with Seagate over the years and their drives are very quiet.

EchiDna · « **Reply #10 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 08:25 am »

yup barracudas are the dog's bollocks in terms of quietness etc....

check out www.storagereview.com for the latest reviews, speed and noise stats...

(click on the leaderboard tab)

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #11 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 09:48 am »

My desire to go with SATA is basically so I can use 2 HDs & still be able to hook up 3 optical drives. I want to have my DVD burner, a CD burner & a CD-ROM all hooked up in the same machine.

Brad · « **Reply #12 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 11:10 am »

Why not go with 15k rpm Seagate SCSI drives?

They are a little noisier, but very responsive.
Prices have come down quite a bit.

In one of my desktops, I have a 15k 36Gb drive for the OS and apps with a 2nd 100Gb IDE drive for bulk storage. Works pretty well.

Hard drive speed seems to make a bigger difference in day to day general computer usage than the last few ticks of clock speed in the processor.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #13 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 09:05 pm »

I think the MoBo I plan to use doens't like mixing optical & HDs on the same cable. So I really should use 2 SATAs if I go that route. Do the newer Seagate SATAs still require that the drivers be installed from floppy?

srclose · « **Reply #14 on:** 12 Jul 2004, 09:09 pm »

I just completed an AMD64 system with WinXP Home, which uses the Promise378 controller. It did require an updated SATA driver for the ASUS K8V SE motherboard on floppy disk during the XP setup routine.

edit: Forgot to mention I am using a Barracuda IV harddrive.