The first of the Netburst P4 chips I had to review were disappointing. Sporting the new Netbust micro-architecture, their performance lagged noticeably behind the high-end P3 chips. This was partially due to Intel`s insistence of using its Rambus (RDRAM) memory technology, which not only slowed the machine down, but also rocketed the price of a system into the realm of the ludicrous. The latest motherboards and chipsets from Intel have moved back to more conventional memory, and the difference is immediately apparent.
The problem with Rambus, as far as I could ascertain, was that its random-access time lagged behind other RAM technologies, even though its streaming speeds were exceptional, with a maximum throughput of 3.2GBps per bus. No one told Intel that most computing applications don`t do a lot of streaming, and are mainly dependent on random RAM access. This is probably why Intel`s TV ad pushes the first P4`s demonstrated home movies and music - streaming entertainment apps rather than conventional business applications.
When I received the 2.4GHz chip for review, I was sceptical about the system`s overall performance, even sending the box back to Intel to upgrade the drive from the sluggish ATA66 that the company sent me. The machine sported a GeForce 3, an ATA100 drive, and the 845 chipset. I was also circumspect about only 256MB SDRAM, but it proved sufficient for review purposes.
In fact, despite concerns that the machine would bottleneck on the drive, memory, or video card, it seemed to suffer from none of these detractors. If anything, the system proved how reliant the machine still is on the processor, despite the processing load being increasingly distributed around the box.
Gaming benchmark
MadOnion`s gaming and 3D graphic benchmark, 3Dmark, clocked the machine in the late 8000s and early 9000s in various tests, double what would be considered a reasonable gaming system benchmark. Intel reports a 5% increase in performance from its 2.2GHz processor on its floating point benchmark, and a 6% boost on its integer processing capabilities, which represent the processor`s typical workload.
The MIPS improvement is a little under 10%, meaning that users will only see about half the performance increase of the chip. Although bottlenecks were not as bad as I expected them to be, they are evidently still in the system, and I advise users to configure their systems carefully to get the most worth from their processor. It also means that an upgrade to the new 2.4GHz processor is only worthwhile if upgrading from a significantly slower chip. An upgrade from 2GHz to 2.4GHz is not going to provide a performance benefit that justifies the cost.
When purchasing a P4 2.4GHz processor, the user will have the choice between the Intel 850 chipset and the 845 chipset. I recommend the 845 motherboard, simply because of its choice of memory options. While the 850 only supports Rambus, the 845 can handle PC133, DDR 200 and DDR 266 modules. Rather get more DDR SDRAM memory than the faster, but more pricey, Rambus memory. Apart from the memory, both chipsets have exactly the same features: 4x AGP port, four USB ports, a LAN interface, a 133MBps PCI bus, six audio channels, and two ATA 100 busses.
Beating bottlenecks
The new P4, combined with the 845 chipset, certainly raises Intel`s Netburst micro-architecture in my eyes. Since we`re stuck with it for the next few years, I`m glad that it has proved itself as fast and scalable as we move up Moore`s graph.
The industry as a whole is working on a series of technology standards that will deal with bottlenecks within the system (3GIO, Infiniband, and Serial ATA to name but three). Although these new technologies will initially roll-out on servers, we can expect them to move to desktops eventually. Let`s hope they get there before the bottlenecks that I predict for this machine start rearing their ugly heads in future boxes.
(Review machine supplied by Compucomp.)
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