Intel Pentium 4

Everyone said it was dead, but the Pentium 4 580 (4.0GHz Prescott, BX80547PG4000E) seems to be rearing its ugly head in Europe. A bit of creative Googling should yield some German merchants with the processor in question. We have the chip on our radar in RTPE, but we don't anticipate or recommend that anyone get too excited over this monstrosity. Sometimes, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

In other news, the Pentium 4 lineup is finally getting 64-bit support. Considering the sad state of 64-bit drivers and Windows x64, jumping onto the 64-bit wagon with the already poor Prescott architecture might not be such a good deal. If you're interested in an operating system with real 64-bit support, then maybe the new Prescotts are worth it. On the other hand, you're probably better spending your money on Athlon 64s instead.

The Prescott-2M chips moved ever slightly this week, although hardly enough over the last few months to warrant a purchase. We are still unconvinced of the Prescott's performance when compared to Athlon 64, so don't expect to see us recommending any of these processors in the near future (unless the price begins to drop dramatically). Surprisingly, even though Intel added another chip to the Prescott 2M lineup, other Prescott-2M chips did not move in price because the Prescott 670 [RTPE: BX80547PG3800F] debuted well above the MSRP of any of the other Prescott chips.

Sempron & Turion Celeron & Pentium M
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  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    coomar: The motherboard costs are a little more negligable than I first originally thought. You can get a 945P board for about $130.

    http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=945p&pr...

    An nForce4 Ultra Socket 939 board runs about $90 (unless you love Biostar).

    http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=nforce4%20u...

    So compare $605 for AMD versus $375 for Intel; it comes to about 1.6. I would still think the D820 has the advantage although I would be very interested in seeing the new AMD chip in a couple weeks. Let's just hope they ship near launch time so that we won't be waiting as pricing on the D820/D840 and X2 chips plummets.

    Kristopher
  • coomar - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    the difference between the x2 coming in august and the lowest pentium-D is 345/240 or 1.4, factor in that the pentium needs a more expensive motherboard than the x2 and that drops down to 15-30% more, which is reasonable

    we can ignore ram prices, ddr and ddr2 are pretty much equal
  • boban10 - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    The problem with Pentium D is power consuption. And nobody mentioned how much you need to pay more energy bill with those cpus....
  • PrinceGaz - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    I'm getting nothing at all showing up in the lists of prices, except for maybe one or two parts every page or two. For instance on the AMD Desktop page, all I see is

    AMD Athlon 64 (754) 3400+ 512KB Newcastle CDW 319.76 9.99 329.75 +158.03 Check Prices

    there are no S939 parts in the upper table, and thats all that it finds for S754.
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    sprockkets: I don't know if you've used an Intel CPU lately... they basically mount the thing on the motherboard with plastic anchors. Then again, they've done that since the original Pentium if you really think about it!

    Kristopher
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    JGunther: AMD's fab 30 is hardly a high production fab (it's barely more than a foundry) and yes, the entire facility isn't even dedicated to X2/Opteron A6 production. Meanwhile all of Intel's fabs are doing dual core production...

    Let's be honest, Intel doesn't have a chance on the technology front here. No doubt about it, AMD has Intel licked as far as tech goes. Unfortunately, they can't seem to make it on the cheap like they did the Barton series.

    Throw me a sub $300 A64 dual core chip (even a Sempron) and I am sure it will do circles around the D820. Unfortunately, AMD isn't even close to something like that right now. Maybe 01'06.

    Kristopher
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    5 - the point is that there's a reason Pentium D can cost quite a lot less than the X2. You can love AMD all you want, but the simple fact of life is that Intel is way ahead in production capabilities, and that leads to the higher prices. Even the upcoming X2 won't change that too much. It will still cost over 50% more than the 820 I think, and is it 50% faster?

    I want to try to get some OC tests done with some of these chips, particularly the Turion/Mobile Athlon parts. We'll see....
  • ElJefe - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    OH, I have to add to the Ext. Edition post:

    a 3700 754 socket outperforms that in gaming.

    lol. check it out.... across the board.... lol. wtf intel?

    i know the EE of course does video really well, but er, yeah. what a minute % of computing time is devoted to video compression..... and that cant wait another minute....
  • ElJefe - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    Ya know, I can't understand the high level dual core intels, the low end, they sound neat for certain uses and business things def. so.

    However, I would rather eat glass in truth than buy any intel besides a Dothan 2.1ghz, which is more money than it should be.
    amd just has a retarded freakin way to explain their cores and chips.

    I dont personally think that the Toledo 4400 is going to drop anytime until january by any noticable degree. They have the market cornered on the best dual cores, and well, for 600 dollars I can get myself a sick proc and also feel dumb that I spent that much.

    i wonder if M2 is going to be anything. it must have something up it's sleeve. as it stands now it doesnt offer a blessed thing.
  • sprockkets - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    The intel dual core processor is nice, well, doesn't that thing run very hot?

    Well anyway, can you elaborate as to what you mean by Intel being a "plastic monstrosity"?

    What is cool is that the new boxed amd processors come in a green tray that feels like styrofoam but says it's really made out of paper.

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