Final Words

With the 570J being the last desktop Pentium 4 launched in 2004 (once again, not counting the Extreme Edition), it looks like AMD will close out this year on top, which is fitting considering how strong AMD has been throughout the entire year.

Looking at the performance of the Pentium 4 570J it's clear that had Intel launched the 4GHz Pentium 4 things would have been much more competitive than we first thought. AMD would still hold the crown in gaming performance, but Intel would have been able to pick up a lot of lost steam in other areas and continue to solidify leads in content creation, 3D rendering and encoding applications.

We're still being cautiously pessimistic about the types of performance gains we'll see from the upcoming 600 series of CPUs from Intel. As you may have already read, Intel is planning on doubling the L2 cache of Prescott and launching a new 600 series of CPUs next year. With twice the L2 cache Intel will attempt to get most of the benefits of an on-die memory controller, mainly reduced memory access latencies, without actually implementing one. We've seen the positive impact this can have with Intel's Extreme Edition chips, but even then, it may not be enough. Raw clock speed is what the Pentium 4's architecture was designed for, and only that will give Intel a commanding lead - unfortunately for them 3.8GHz does seem to be the end of the road for quite a while.

The performance paradigm will eventually shift to being more depending on multithreading capabilities, but that transition is far from being complete, especially on the desktop. It may end up being that Longhorn in 2006 is when we start to reap the benefits of more than just clock speed with every processor release.

Right now we couldn't be happier with AMD, they are more on top of their game today than they ever were with the Athlon XP and the Athlon 64 platform is by far the most attractive platform AMD has ever had. We've seen AMD offer leading performance in the past, but never have they commanded such a strong lead for such an incredible length of time. If AMD could have repeat of 2004 next year the few companies that still don't take them seriously enough may finally come around.

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  • pplapeu - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    why do you no longer overclock?

    you know users will do that. What if this processor was dialed up 10%, it would clock at 4.18Ghz and could run faster. I think the performance tales would be far different.
  • Staples - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    Well the CEO did step down a few days ago. I hope we see better management soon. This is an embarrasment for Intel. Ever since the A64 came out, Intel has been releasing backseat products.
  • IntelUser2000 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    No, its that most of you guys are AMD biased. Say Intel does release a high-performing Pentium M architecture based chip. Then you guys will just shut up and say nothing else. If AMD comes with 5% performance lead, AMD is thought of as GOD or something. Probably even greater. And about BTX, Pentium M does run pretty cool, but at 21W, that was equal to initial 0.18 micron P3's. Actually some of the DESKTOP P3's had ~15W TDP. I heard 286's and 386's had less than 5W TDP. Cooler, and faster is always better. Granted you may not need as much if your processor runs hotter, but still its necessary. It's also mentioned that since quiet PCs are gaining popularity, BTX can help a lot since it will allow graphics cards to have smaller fans.

    Another 3.8GHz P4 link: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041115/index.htm...

    Quite contrary to their 3.6GHz throttling article, they seem positive towards 3.8GHz P4.
  • fawifewaewaf - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    diaff cretin
  • mlittl3 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    #35,

    Do you know that the long post of #21 is the author of the article you just read (which is way longer than any post) and the owner of Anandtech? Do you see the post is from ANAND Lal Shimpi? And that his post was in response to the other long post which Anand saw as important enough to respond to.

    I enjoy all the comments on this site, long and short. It gives readers a sort of "behind the scenes" look at hardware and software. I think there should be no restrictions as it currently stands.

    Keep 'em coming. Go Anandtech :)
  • bob661 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    Based on #32's link, it would seem that the P4's would decrease in performance during sustained use with an average user. So unless you're an enthusiast, you would not see the full performance of any of the new P4's.
  • Alphafox78 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    There should be a size limit on posts...
  • GTMan - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    Does the EDB functionality lower system performance when it is turned on?
  • Auteur - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    #12:

    The only reason HardOCP uses DVD2AVI in their bench marking suite is its the only Divx front end that runs faster on AMD cpu's than Intel's. Its a dead app (the author no longer updates it) that can't IVTC, deinterlace, clean or sharpen video. Its great for demuxing audio and thats it.

    Intel's chips dominate when you use the popular front ends like AutoGK, Gordian Knot or Xmpeg. Read Doom9's forum if you don't believe me.
  • langles - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link

    Did you read the article at Tom's Hardware this weekend about the thermal issues with the Pentium 4 3.6 GHz?

    http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041114/index.htm...
    "The Heat Can Cause Intel's P4 To Throttle And Damage Over Time"

    I would expect that this issue is even worse for the 3.8 GHz.

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