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Only a few weeks ago we took a look at the 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 and concluded that whilst it was potentially the fastest x86 CPU available, it was probably worthwhile waiting for the new Pentium 4 which makes use of the new 533 MHz Front Side Bus. Now these chips are upon us we can take the opportunity to assess whether they are worth your hard earned cash, or whether there are better alternatives available. Intel has taken this opportunity to release not one new Pentium 4, but two new chips running at 2.4 GHz and 2.53 GHz whilst using the new 533 MHz Front Side bus. Whilst these chips are based upon the same 0.13 micron “Northwood” core as the Pentium 4 “A”, Intel has decided to use a suffix of “B” to denote the new Front Side Bus speed. As most readers will be aware (or will soon be), the Pentium 4 has had a far rougher ride in gaining market acceptance as the best x86 processor available when compared to previous generations of chips such as the original Pentium, Pentium II and early Pentium III processors. This has been in part due to the much publicised rivalry from AMD and it’s highly accomplished Athlon, and later Athlon XP processor ranges. The other part has been due to the change in design marked the migration from the P6 core of the Pentium III to the new NetBurst core of the current Pentium 4. In a nutshell the Pentium 4 saw the basic processing pipeline rise from 14 stages in the P6 to 20 stages in the Pentium 4. The most noticable effect of this change to the casual observer is a rather large rise in processing latencies (i,e taking 20 clock cycles to complete an instruction as opposed to 14), which lowered the amount of output per MHz when compared to older designs. As a rough rule of thumb, the original 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 was about as fast as a 1 GHz Pentium III. Thus early Pentium 4 chips did not gain the best of reputations. The 0.13 micron “Northwood” core (also known as Pentium 4 “A”) managed to gain the Pentium 4 a reputation of a chip to be reckoned with due to a combination of 512 KB Level 2 cache (achieved by the 0.13 micron core shrink) and ever increasing clock speeds. Whilst the AMD Athlon nudged up to 1.8 GHz in 66 MHz increments, Intel were increasing the Pentium 4 in 200 MHz jumps. It would only have been a matter of time before the Pentium 4 gained the advantage due to sheer clock speed.
Now Intel have increased the Front Side Bus speed of the Pentium 4 by 33 MHz to 133 MHz (533 MHz QDR) to release the new Pentium 4 “B”.
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