Intel's 925X & LGA-775: Are Prescott 3.6 and PCI Express Graphics any Faster?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 21, 2004 12:05 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
We split this article into two sections, basically focusing on the performance of the new Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) as well as the performance impact of using PCI Express graphics, so we will conclude the article accordingly.The Pentium 4 560 manages to offer performance better than that of Intel's fastest Extreme Edition P4, thanks to the additional 200MHz clock increase. The performance enhancement has nothing to do with any architectural changes, as there are none, but everything to do with clock speed. If Intel wants to continue to uphold that their Extreme Edition brand is truly extreme, then a higher frequency core is necessary.
Intel's move to the LGA-775 socket leaves a somewhat foul taste in our mouth, although we do understand the engineering need for such a move. The fragility of the socket requires us to caution our loyal readers once again. Remember that it's quite easy to damage these pins, so don't rush your CPU installation. Intel quotes the mean time between failures of the new LGA-775 socket at around 20 insertions, which they claim is similar to the current Socket-478 interface; only time will tell how reliable these things really are.
With this article, we were also trying to put an end to the ATI vs. NVIDIA PCI Express debate. Our conclusion? The debate was much ado about nothing - both solutions basically perform the same. ATI's native PCI Express offering does nothing to benefit performance and NVIDIA's bridged solution does nothing to hamper performance. The poor showing of NVIDIA under Far Cry and Warcraft III is some cause for concern, which we will be looking into going forward. We will keep you all updated on any and all findings with regards to that issue as we come across them.
Be sure to read our chipset coverage of the new 925X and 915 platforms and stay tuned for more coverage later this week, including integrated graphics performance and an investigation of the impacts of Native Command Queuing support on disk performance.
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Phiro - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Great article, good pics on the new socket.I'm glad to see PCI-E performance is within a % or two of AGP-8X, and that Nvidia & ATI are neck and neck, no big hit on either one.
I think it was clear to anyone who has been following the move to PCI-E that the onus wasn't on a performance increase on a single card - the move to PCI-E is an engineering one, not a siloed performance gain. The idea is we have a much more robust bus, we can have many cards with tons of bandwidth instead of one, and we add alot of versatility.
It's like the move from VLB to PCI - anyone remember that? PCI was a good, good standard. While graphics cards didn't make a huge jump in performance, you finally got away from those damn ISA slots.
Anyhow. I think PCI-E is a good standard, and I'm going to have it in my next system.
RyanVM - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Why weren't there more comparisons between equal processors on the different platforms, such as LGA775 P4E vs. S478 P4E (2.8, 3.2, etc)? It seems to me that those would better isolate the chipset.ZobarStyl - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
I don't think AMD solutions with PCI-E will be any faster...the reason that the benches using the new chipset with DDRII were considered even ground is that the companion article on the new Intel chipsets showed there is at this point no difference between the two setups in terms of performance, only in price. This generation of PCI-E solutions based on AGP designed chips (from both camps) wasn't really built with PCI-E bandwidth in mind, so the gains on any system are likely neglible. Once chips (and games too, I would assume) can be built with the bandwidth of PCI-E in mind perhaps we will see a gain, right now let rich kids upgrade while you sit back on a much cheaper AGP solution that gives the same perf. =)CU - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
I think ATI said they were buffers and not a bridge. I could be wrong though.elephantman - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
I'd have to agree with justly on that last oneAlso..I believe nvidia had posted an xray of ati's pcie core which showed a bridge solution and not a fully native pcie solution as stated...maybe we'll get a response from ati on this soon
justly - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
This quote from page two is pure rubbish."It used to be that the heatsink, not the socket's lever, was what provided the majority of force on the CPU itself to ensure proper contact with the socket."
The force exerted on the CPU by the heatsink is used to maximize heat transfer. If the heatsink force was to provide "contact with the socket" then there would be no need for a lever (at least on a ZIF socket). This would also mean that no one should worry that a CPU could burn up without a heatsink, as it would not have "contact with the socket" without the force of the heatsink pushing down on it.
mkruer - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
To be fair I would use the P4E for rendering IF it wasn’t a power hog. But since I doen render anything movies, I guess not.mkruer - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Hum interesting PCI Express offers virtually no gain because of DDR-2 latencies? I wonder how much better PCI Express would be on an AMD 64 with DDR-1? You don’t have the DDR-2 latencies issues, plus because of HT, that’s Hyper Transport for you Intel people out there, I wonder if in the long run the AMD systems will perform better for the graphics card on average then any Intel chipset. Anyway this confirms my suspicion, “never buy any first generation product form either company” and in Intel’s case this time you might want to wait for the Merom, Conroe and Tukwila, chips because I think everyone should stick a fork in the P4 it’s done! (pun intended)phobs - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Interesting read,Bit of a error on page 22, you say "concluding our AGP vs. PCI Express performance investigation." and then go on to have 2 more pages of benchmarks...