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In the Forums... |
Posted: June 22th, 2001 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen Analysis and Conclusion The Pentium 4 is a processor that’s difficult to understand for a lot of people out there. One must take a look at the core technology behind the Pentium 4 and realize that Intel is driving forth new architectures and new platforms. In the past when Intel introduce the 80386 processor, 32bit computing was unheard of and was generally hype more than anything. But look at where we are today. We’re beginning to saturate 32bit processing and slowly beginning to establish a smooth transition to 64bit processing. Though we won’t be seeing 64bit processors in our local computer stores in the near future, it really reflects what Intel has in mind when it designed the Pentium 4. Optimizations and ground-up code are the two most important things that will unleash the power that’s still relatively dormant inside the Pentium 4. Sometimes it’s unfortunate to be road pavers but one day, many will ride the highway. If you run 32bit code on Intel’s 64bit Itanium, it won’t run as well on the Itanium and would run better on a Pentium 3. Because of this, AMD is taking a different route with its Hammer architecture and effectively slamming two processors into one core. One side will handle 32bit code natively while the other 64bit. Either way, the move to a newer, more efficient, more powerful architecture is inevitable. Each of the Pentium 4’s released on the market overclock very well. The 1.7GHz will give you the highest performance and considering that Intel has slashed prices in record amounts recently, Pentium 4 systems are much more attractive than they use to be. Overclocking the FSB really increased performance because it also increases the speed of other systems like PCI and AGP speeds. These increases along with the actual core speed increase equate to a larger performance increase than you would receive if you purchase a faster processor constantly. I noticed speeds reaching upwards of 18% in some cases -- especially in games. Regular business application users will see a slight improvement but for those of you that fall into this category, overclocking isn’t needed and I would rather stick with stability for productivity situations. All in all, the Pentium 4 has a lot of good things going for it if Intel can just push out higher clock speeds. It looks like there are some wrinkles that need to be ironed out but they surely will in due time. When next-gen games come out, the Pentium 4 will be ready with all pipelines locked, and loaded. |
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