Pentium 4 3.46 Extreme Edition and 925XE: 1066MHz FSB Support is Here
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 31, 2004 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Business/General Use Performance
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Microsoft Access 2002
. Microsoft Excel 2002
. Microsoft FrontPage 2002
. Microsoft Outlook 2002
. Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
. Microsoft Project 2002
. Microsoft Word 2002
. Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
. WinZip 8.1
We saw in our initial benchmarks that the 1066MHz FSB does very little for business applications, thus it's no surprise here to see the 3.46EE barely outperform its 3.4GHz counterpart.
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."
Similar to what we just saw in the Business Winstone tests, the 3.46EE doesn't change things for Intel here. The 3.46EE is about the same speed as the Pentium 4 550 and the older 3.4EE.
The next test is Document Creation performance, which shows very little difference in drive performance between the contenders:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."
The extra speed and the faster FSB gives Intel the right to the top bar, but performance remains virtually unchanged from the pre-3.46EE days.
The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
The 3.46EE does a little better here, climbing up one spot to outperform the Pentium 4 530, but still falling behind the Pentium 4 550."The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."
Microsoft Office XP SP-2
Here we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much. The spread of performance here is around 6%, which is nothing terribly significant. While AMD continues to top the charts, Intel is basically on par with them here.
There's no performance difference here between the 3.46EE and the 3.4EE:
Mozilla 1.4
Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one we pay the least amount of attention to when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox.
The faster FSB improves performance a bit here but it is still not enough to dethrone AMD, the 3.46EE performs similar to an Athlon 64 3000+. 
ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0
ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop for. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing.
Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3
While it was a major issue in the past, these days buffer underrun errors while burning a CD or DVD are few and far between thanks to high performance CPUs as well as vastly improved optical drives. When you take the optical drive out of the equation, how do these CPU's stack up with burning performance?
As you'd guess, they're all pretty much the same, with the slight variations between chips falling within expectations. Any of these chips will do just fine. The 3.46EE is just as fast as its predecessor.
Winzip
Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited. The faster FSB and slightly higher clock speed give the 3.46EE a slight advantage over the 3.4EE, but nothing noticeable. On the charts it puts Intel within finger's reach of AMD.
WinRAR 3.40
Pulling the hard disk out of the equation we can get a much better idea of which processors are truly best suited for file compression. While the hard drive hid a lot of the shortcomings of the Athlon XP in WorldBench's WinZip test, they are all revealed in WinRAR's built in benchmark that is largely disk I/O independent.
Much like the WinZip test, we see only a slight performance boost under WinRAR.
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T8000 - Thursday, November 4, 2004 - link
The most important part of this release is the Intel 925XE chipset, that will allow much higher overclocks because of its 1066 bus support.This is because the 925XE will have the right divider to reach 1066 without any PCI-E overclock.
So with a 925XE mainboard, you can run an Intel 530 CPU at 4Ghz with any PCI-E GPU you choose, because only the CPU will be overclocked and Prescott has excellent chances of reaching 4Ghz with modest water cooling or good air cooling.
Odeen - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Realtek codec on an Intel board... and here I thought Intel actually made quality motherboards, which entails Sigmatel or Soundmax onboard audio chips.Sigh :(
johnsonx - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Slim: You're right... my bad. I didn't read every single page. I read the couple of introductory pages, then skipped to the test configuration page, perused a few benches, and then skipped to the conclusion.The measured results of course are no different than I thought they would be...
bob661 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
We need to have our own review website called www.dontreleasesh!tunlessitsactuallyabetterproductthan theonebeforeit.com.SLIM - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
johnsonx,Anand did isolate the fsb as the sole variable when he DOWNclocked both chips to 3.2ghz (266 x 12 and 200 x 16) on page 3. There was a slight caveat that faster chips would benefit more from a fsb boost. And yes the faster bus increased performance by almost 1% in some tests woohoo!!!
SLIM
johnsonx - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
One thing that might've been interesting to see:Overclock the 3.4EE to 3.46Ghz by OC'ing the FSB to 203Mhz or 204Mhz (812 & 816 respectively). This would completely isolate the effect if the increased clock speed of the 3.46EE, showing only the increased FSB performance... at that point I suspect that the tiny performance gains would completely evaporate.
Mind you, I'm not suggesting this would change the conclusion much, but it would put a big exclamation point to it...
BTW, one does have to wonder why Intel bothered with this. If the 3.46EE/925XE combo is no faster than the 3.4EE/925X combo (I'm assuming the 925X=925XE @800FSB), then why go through all the trouble? Indeed, isn't it true that an 'old' 3.4EE/875 combo is faster still?
Good grief, at least when AMD releases a new top-end chip it is actually measurably faster. Regardless of whether the rating is 'earned' or not, no one can argue that the 4000 isn't (generally) faster than the 3800, nor that the FX-55 isn't faster than any other A64.
Tides - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Some benchmarks? Hardly. AMD owns in actual games, workstation apps, and half of the other stuff. Not to mention AMD doesn't make you upgrade to ddr2, and AMD cpus are 64bit. Intel's new chips have low shelf lives while the current AMD 64's you buy will last you a lot longer.Performance, realiability, and long lasting.
danidentity - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
IntelUser2000, you couldn't possibly be any more wrong. I will be the first to admit that AMD chips excel above Intel chips in many benchmarks.However:
1. Intel is no where near dead. Calling them so is ridiculous. In Q3 of this year Intel posted revenue of 8.5 billion compared to AMD's 1.2 billion, or SEVEN times as much.
2. AMD is NOT closing "very rapidly" in marketshare. It would appear that way from reading sites and forums like these, but it gives you a false impression. Keep in mind that the largest supplier of PCs on the planet puts Intel chips in every machine. AMD's mobile chips can't compete with the Pentium M in terms of performance and functionality.
3. Intel is not stupid, they have some of the best engineers on the planet. If they seriously thought that AMD was going to topple them as the market leader, or even if they are predicting it, you can GUARANTEE they have something in the works to strike back. They have the means and the money.
4. While many people don't know exactly what clockspeed is, everyone thinks it is the ultimate measure of performance. That mindset will take a LONG time to change, and by then, Intel will have something new.
Most people out there don't even know AMD exists. Just because AMD chips beat Intel chips in some benchmarks posted on technical computer sites, don't mean they're going to topple Intel.
JonahStone - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Performance is not the only reason why somebody buys a CPU. Although 64 bit might not be available now, does not make it unimportant. Many who buy a computer will keep it for a long time. I do not want to buy a new PC in a year's time to run 64 bit apps. All reviews keep on comparing 32 bit performance and do not even mention the advantage 64 bit will bring. It does matter!!!!!!!IntelUser2000 - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Intel is not doing bad. They are doing terrible. So terrible that you might as well call them dead. Probably will last till 2009 before they fill bankruptcy.To those people who say people in forums don't know anything and that there are other people stupid enough to buy Intel chips(I mean all Intel chips): Uhh, yeah, get your head straight, since AMD is closing with Intel very rapidly in marketshare, in server, desktop, and laptop, and that means that gamers actually do make a difference(albeit slowly) making other people buy computers. You think other people will buy P4's because of high clock speed? That's BS, since people who is stupid enough to buy Intel chips don't even know what clock speeds does. There are only a very few that knows computers JUST enough to say clock speed is good.