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
Does it Improve Real World Performance?
There is a convenient convergence point between the 1066MHz FSB and the 800MHz FSB - 3.2GHz. By underclocking our 3.4EE and our 3.46EE to 3.2GHz we managed to put together a nice comparison of the impact of FSB on real world performance, independent of CPU and memory clock speed. Granted, the impact of the 1066MHz FSB will be greater at higher CPU clock speeds, but the impact at 3.2GHz should be able to tell us how much of the 3.46EE's performance advantage is due to its faster FSB.
The table below gives a good indication of the lack of performance improvement due to the 1066MHz FSB today in most applications. With an average performance increase of less than 1%, you shouldn't expect the 1066MHz FSB to do much for Intel at all.
| Business/General Use | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Business Winstone 2004 | 21.2 |
21.2 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Communication | 136 |
136 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Document Creation | 201 |
198 |
1.49% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Data Analysis | 162 |
161 |
0.62% |
| Microsoft Office XP with SP-2 | 511 |
511 |
0.00% |
| Mozilla 1.4 | 401 |
405 |
1.00% |
| ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0 | 593 |
593 |
0.00% |
| Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3 | 543 |
553 |
1.84% |
| WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1 | 419 |
431 |
2.86% |
| WinRAR | 419 |
413 |
1.43% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.92% |
||
Under Multitasking Content Creation applications we see that despite the nature of these applications to be more memory bandwidth intensive, the 800MHz FSB simply wasn't a limitation for the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Couple that with the fact that with a very large on-die L3 cache, the Extreme Edition needs to fetch data across the FSB much less frequently, it's no surprise that the biggest performance improvement in our Multitasking Content Creation tests was only 1.52%.
| Multitasking Content Creation | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Content Creation Winstone 2004 | 30.9 |
30.9 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - 3D Creation | 207 |
204 |
1.45% |
| SYSMark 2004 - 2D Creation | 264 |
260 |
1.52% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Web Publication | 187 |
185 |
1.07% |
| Multitasking: Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder | 596 |
600 |
0.67% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.94% |
||
There's not much to see in the Video Creation/Photo Editing tests, the 1066MHz FSB does absolutely nothing for performance here.
| Video Creation/Photo Editing | ||||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
||
| Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 | 347 |
347 |
0.00%
|
|
| Adobe Premiere 6.5 | 533 |
533 |
0.00%
|
|
| Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 | 289 |
289 |
0.00%
|
|
| Average Performance Increase | 0.00% |
|||
In the past, DivX encoding has seen reasonable performance increases due to a faster FSB and increased memory bandwidth. With the move to the 1066MHz FSB we seem to have hit a limit, as there's absolutely no performance improvement here either. It looks like it will take much higher clock speeds for the 1066MHz FSB to make a difference.
| Audio/Video Encoding | ||||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
||
| MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10 | 434 |
434 |
0.00% |
|
| DivX Encoding | 49.9 |
49.9 |
0.00% |
|
| XV iD Encoding | 28.7 |
28.5 |
0.70% |
|
| Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0 | 2.32 |
2.32 |
0.00% |
|
| Average Performance Increase | 0.00% |
|||
Games have also been areas where faster FSB frequencies have benefited Intel,
but once again we see that the average performance increase is less than a
percent. Starwars Battlefront shows the greatest increase in performance at
2.8% due to the 1066MHz FSB.
| Gaming | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Doom 3 | 86.1 |
85.2 |
1.05% |
| Sims 2 | 46 |
46 |
0.00% |
| CS: Source | 156.8 |
156.4 |
0.26% |
| Halo | 88.4 |
88 |
0.45% |
| Far Cry | 133.5 |
132 |
1.12% |
| Star Wars Battlefront | 143 |
139 |
2.80% |
| Battlefield Vietnam | 239 |
239 |
0.00% |
| UT2004 | 59 |
58.6 |
0.68% |
| Wolf: ET | 98 |
96.9 |
1.12% |
| Warcraft III | 60 |
59 |
1.67% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.91% |
||
We weren't expecting to see much in the 3D rendering tests and the 1066MHz FSB did not disappoint with only a 0.74% average performance increase here.
| 3D Rendering | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (DirectX) | 280 |
282 |
0.71% |
| Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (OpenGL) | 339 |
342 |
0.88% |
| SPECapc 3dsmax 6 | 1.63 |
1.62 |
0.61% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.74% |
||
Our final suite of tests are the professional applications tested by SPECviewperf
8. Here we see the largest overall gains provided by the 1066MHz FSB, with
performance improvements approaching 5%, and average performance improvements
approaching 3%. There's very little gain in compiling performance but in the
realm of 3D professional application performance the 1066MHz FSB begins to
show its worth. The gains here will only get better as clock speeds increase,
so maybe the 1066MHz FSB will pay off for those running demanding enough applications
to require a $1000+ 3.46EE CPU.
| Professional Apps | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| SPECviewperf 8 - 3dsmax-03 | 15.99 |
15.99 |
0.00% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - catia-01 | 12.62 |
12.08 |
4.28% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - light-07 | 12.89 |
12.41 |
3.72% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - maya-01 | 12.66 |
12.32 |
2.69% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - proe-03 | 15.9 |
15.31 |
3.71% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - sw-01 | 12.87 |
12.53 |
2.64% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - ugs-04 | 13.71 |
13.1 |
4.45% |
| Visual Studio 6 | 16.8 |
16.7 |
0.60% |
| Average Performance Increase | 2.76% |
||
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AlexWade - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Now if only I can afford and find one ...MMORPGOD - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
IntelUser2000 - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
DDR2 is not a stupid move, its the speed they are at that's stupid. Remember DDR? They first ones ran at 200MHz, which were 50% faster than PC133 and still way faster than the enthusiast 166MHz SDRAMs. DDR's latency were higher, but since their clock is much higher, it wasn't a big problem as DDR2 vs DDR. However, PC1600 DDR still was not a big improvement over PC133, it was when PC2100 came that DDR started to shine.Another thing:
Quote:"With the original 925X chipset we were a bit unhappy to see that the Pentium 4's 800MHz FSB was paired with DDR2-533, creating one of those frustrating asynchronous situations."
I think 800MHz bus with DDR2-533 is actually VERY synchronous. First look it doesn't look like it. However since DDR2s latency is higher, it doesn't act like DDR533, it acts like DDR400. There was a Tomshardware review that was trying to predict the performance of 1066MHz bus.
First config was: 800MHz bus, DDR2-533
Second: 1066MHz bus, DDR2-533
Third: 1066MHz bus, DDR2-667
Guess which one had the biggest performance benefit? The third one, contrary to most people's belief. I think that tells that because of the DDR2's latency, you need DDR2-667 to perfectly match 1066MHz bus. Since Intel chose to stick with DDR2-533, they have created an asynchronous situation, making the performance not so much better. They should have went DDR2-667 with 1066MHz bus.
SLIM - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
One thing I didn't catch from anand's review is that the 3.46ee is rated at 110.7 watts according to [H]; just another reason to go AMD. Makes you wonder what the 3.73ee (which is supposed to launch this quarter) will have for a heatsink...Prometia for everyone:)
Tides - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
I remember reading a week or two ago about "AMD is going to have a tough time keeping up," from the lips of an Intel guy.Was this latest outing with the new P4EE's the proof? Perhaps I lack the foresight to understand what will happen in 6 months time, but in who's world is AMD going to have a hard time keeping up with? Cyrix's?
Tides - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
"ddr2 is a stupid move."Tides - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
not to mention, hi, ddr2 for is a stupid move. high latency, crap bandwidth, not just twice the price since you wouldn't have had to upgrade your ram otherwise if you already had solid ddr1.it reminds me of rambus. and beta max. and sony's discman. what else? ddr2 should have never come out imo. ddr3 is where it's at, hopefully amd will go straight to ddr3 and save it's customers and themselves the hastle of having to buy new ram, new mobos and so forth just to have to do it again with ddr3. i like faster everything as much as everyone else, but amd 64 proves ddr1 is alive and well, and ddr2 is what? exactly? perhaps in a year down the road, or two; it'll be worth something at the end of it's life cycle, just as ddr3 starts poking it's head about.
GhandiInstinct - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Why don't they just screw any other core and focus on pumping out $1000 EEs? Everyones buying them, might as well. I really would like to know the stats for Intel's sales on their new cpus and chipsets, exact numbers.GhandiInstinct - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
#17 I was infering this world is off balance with that reality...Gnoad - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
wow. $1000 a pop for a CPU that gets destroyed by processors that cost a quarter as much. Totally asinine.