Intel's Pentium 4 670: Just Another Speed Bump
by Derek Wilson on May 26, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test and Business/General Use Performance
The Test
Our hardware configurations are similar to what we've used in previous comparisons.AMD Athlon 64 Configuration
Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
NVIDIA nForce4 Reference Motherboard
ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI Express
Intel Pentium 4 Configuration
LGA-775 Intel Pentium 4 and Extreme Edition CPUs
2 x 512MB Crucial DDR-II 533 Dual Channel DIMMs 3-3-3-12
Intel 925XE and 945G Motherboards
ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI Express
Business/General Use Performance
Business Winstone 2004Business 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
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."
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 final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"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.
Mozilla 1.4
Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one that 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.
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. 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, buffer underrun errors while burning a CD or DVD are few and far between these days, 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?
Winzip
Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited.
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Gatak - Saturday, May 28, 2005 - link
DRM!http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=49...
Seems as the new Intel CPUs and Chiptsets are DRM enabled in hardware now!
Icehawk - Saturday, May 28, 2005 - link
There were some odd results IMO, at least one test were the 660 was faster than the 670. Eh?Remember the good old days when a processor that cost more and was rated higher was just plain faster? :D
When is Anandtech going to update the version of ACDSee used? It is 2 versions old :(
The DvD - Saturday, May 28, 2005 - link
#28: Then you effectively reviewed the 945 board, and not the cpu. Because the 670 would only be 5.5% faster max. than the 660. Perhaps the graphs could be changed to say '670 (945)' for the new Intel combo.RockHydra11 - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
C'mon Intel. Exnay on the escotpreyacoub - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
20 - Posted on May 26, 2005 at 8:33 PM by flatblastard Reply#10 "don't forget, a 200 MHz increase with AMD cpus is like a 300+ MHz increase for intel"
#13 Also consider the fact that 200 "A64 Mhz" aren't equal to 200 "P4 MHz"
I am aware of this, and I will now make you aware of the fact that I can afford to have 10 less FPS.
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Ah, so in that case you CERTAINLY wouldn't buy this more expensive 670 chip that doesn't even always outperform slower Intel ones.
DerekWilson - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
The 670 was the only board to use the 945 chipset and latest drivers from Intel. This could account for the odd Nero and Winzip numbers. I'm speaking more of the drivers than the hardware.Derek Wilson
mjz - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
#20.. I don't understand, why would you want to buy a CPU that is slower than a cheaper alternative.. That being, AMD. Faster, cheaper, why not?JarredWalton - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
23 - I'm almost positive that the 4000+ used was an older Sledgehammer core. As far as I know, no one at AnandTech has a San Diego yet.Murst - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
I really don't understand why so many people complain/laugh at/question CPU releases. Everyone should be happy that another CPU is out on the market. The more are out there (especially of the upper end processors), the faster the price will drop.We'll have to wait and see if other sites get the same differences in the 6xx family before jumping to conclusions, but it sure does seem very strange....
Zebo - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
No X2 in there?Well I guess Intel has to win a couple benchmarks..and technically the X2 processor is'nt really "out" yet.:D
But niether is 670...