Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part I: First Encounter
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 4, 2005 2:44 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Chip: Pentium Extreme Edition
As we mentioned in our IDF coverage, Intel has dropped the number 4 from their naming for their dual core parts. The new dual core desktop CPUs will simply be called the Pentium D and the Pentium Extreme Edition.
Both the Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition are nothing more than two 90nm Prescott 1M dies glued together. That means that each core has its own 1MB L2 cache, and that also means that architecturally, these chips are no different than the single core Pentium 4s that are out today - other than the obvious dual core fact.
Contrary to what we've reported earlier, the only difference between the Pentium D and the Pentium Extreme Edition is the presence of Hyper Threading; mainly, the Pentium D doesn't have it, while the Extreme Edition does. Both chips will only use a 800MHz FSB, they both have the same cache sizes, and they only differ in the presence of HT.
Armed with Hyper Threading, the Pentium Extreme Edition allows the execution of 4 concurrent threads and appears as a quad processor CPU to the OS. Without Hyper Threading, the Pentium D only allows for 2 concurrent threads and appears as a dual processor CPU to the OS.
While the Pentium D will be offered in three speed grades, from 2.8GHz up to 3.2GHz, the Extreme Edition will only be launched at 3.2GHz. Note that the fastest single core Pentium 4s run between 3.6GHz and 3.8GHz, so there is a significant clock speed penalty paid by going to dual core.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
141 Comments
View All Comments
haveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Only downside but I think a majorleague heat solution should make everything sweethaveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Oh Please give us a break. If you want to be a purist, go live in the woods without clothes. I say that multitasking makes my day a breeze.Whats your dilemma??
haveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Wow-I just purchased a new sys with an Intel Dual CPU setup. As a multitasking monster on my machine, I was always having crashes in the past.I think that is gone with George Bush in 2008. THe good news is the dual core pair is already hear and ready to run. Give them a try-no downside, albeit a good bit of heat. That is something I will need to work on, but....
peufeu - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
I forgot to mention... gentoo linux ;)peufeu - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Dual CPUs to compensate for the inept MS Windows.Interesting.
I'm torturing a webserver I just wrote, on my laptop. It's in Python. Right now it's serving about 2000 requests per second with 1000 concurrent connections.
I don't even notice it's running. The CPU gauge is at 100%, so what ? Nothing special. As reactive as usual. It doesn't swap. The harddisk even put itself in standby....
Go, bill, go !
shady28 - Sunday, April 17, 2005 - link
Making special tests just for these processors seems a bit contrived to me. In particular, comparing dual core processors to a Pentium 4 with HT disabled, in a multithreading/multitasking benchmark, is just plane lame.
I would have been a lot more interested in seeing how dual core compares in multitasking vs dual opterons or dual Xeons. Right now it looks like dual core is slower at doing one task at a time, suprisingly not that much faster at doing two tasks at a time than HT Pentium 4s. The only exceptions were the off the wall tests done at the end.
Since these new 'benchmarks' are made to simulate 'real life use', does that mean that all Anand's previous reviews were bogus?
JimGunn - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I think I will want one of these for my next video editing & encoding workstation. Will come in handy for HDV post I am sure!BoBOh - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
Where are the code compile tests. We're not all gamers, some are software developers! :)BoB
warath - Friday, April 8, 2005 - link
I can't wait to see 64-bit dual cores! :)WoodenPupa - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Well, I'm not a tech whiz like everyone else here, but here's my 2 centavos...I can attest to the fact that every machine I ever buy, I bring it to its knees. I usually wait several generations before I upgrade in order to get a more profound effect. Yet that strategy doesn't seem to matter because no matter how fast my computer is, I find that my NORMAL computing habits end up crushing the CPU and everything else.
I use Cool Edit Pro and some other audio programs, and I am also a chess player, and like to anyalyze games in the background with Fritz or Chessbase, both of which allow for gigantic hash tables. So as a typical case I like to do wave transforms and chess analysis as background items while I compose e-mails or use Word for more serious writing. Naturally I like to listen to music at the same time, but usually I have to give that up. Needless to say, all of this stuff cripples my computer---I'm due for an upgrade, I know---my box is a 2.53 GHz P4, 1 GB of Rambus 800 (no groaning, please), a GF4 ti 4600, 120 GB HD, I'm not even sure what the cache on that is, I don't think it's 8 or 5 MB---feels more like 2.
I usually end up quitting the Chess program or the Mp3 player---once in a while I can do all of this stuff concurrently if the wave transforms on cool edit aren't too complex, and I minimize the hash tables on the chess program.
Ideally I want everything to be instantaneous, but...:) Anyway, from what it sounds like, I need a dual or even quad processor setup. Because even with all the above mentioned programs running, I can think of more I would like to add. I'm a monster multitasker and really like to kick a computer right in the face, to show it who's boss. I'm tired of winning, though---I'd love it if one day the computer just scoffed at everything I threw at it. Sadly, I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime.
Should I upgrade to a dual core, or should I save and get a true multi-CPU Mobo like a quad Xeon??