Pentium 4 3.46 Extreme Edition and 925XE: 1066MHz FSB Support is Here
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 31, 2004 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Does it Improve Real World Performance?
There is a convenient convergence point between the 1066MHz FSB and the 800MHz FSB - 3.2GHz. By underclocking our 3.4EE and our 3.46EE to 3.2GHz we managed to put together a nice comparison of the impact of FSB on real world performance, independent of CPU and memory clock speed. Granted, the impact of the 1066MHz FSB will be greater at higher CPU clock speeds, but the impact at 3.2GHz should be able to tell us how much of the 3.46EE's performance advantage is due to its faster FSB.
The table below gives a good indication of the lack of performance improvement due to the 1066MHz FSB today in most applications. With an average performance increase of less than 1%, you shouldn't expect the 1066MHz FSB to do much for Intel at all.
| Business/General Use | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Business Winstone 2004 | 21.2 |
21.2 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Communication | 136 |
136 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Document Creation | 201 |
198 |
1.49% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Data Analysis | 162 |
161 |
0.62% |
| Microsoft Office XP with SP-2 | 511 |
511 |
0.00% |
| Mozilla 1.4 | 401 |
405 |
1.00% |
| ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0 | 593 |
593 |
0.00% |
| Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3 | 543 |
553 |
1.84% |
| WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1 | 419 |
431 |
2.86% |
| WinRAR | 419 |
413 |
1.43% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.92% |
||
Under Multitasking Content Creation applications we see that despite the nature of these applications to be more memory bandwidth intensive, the 800MHz FSB simply wasn't a limitation for the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Couple that with the fact that with a very large on-die L3 cache, the Extreme Edition needs to fetch data across the FSB much less frequently, it's no surprise that the biggest performance improvement in our Multitasking Content Creation tests was only 1.52%.
| Multitasking Content Creation | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Content Creation Winstone 2004 | 30.9 |
30.9 |
0.00% |
| SYSMark 2004 - 3D Creation | 207 |
204 |
1.45% |
| SYSMark 2004 - 2D Creation | 264 |
260 |
1.52% |
| SYSMark 2004 - Web Publication | 187 |
185 |
1.07% |
| Multitasking: Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder | 596 |
600 |
0.67% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.94% |
||
There's not much to see in the Video Creation/Photo Editing tests, the 1066MHz FSB does absolutely nothing for performance here.
| Video Creation/Photo Editing | ||||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
||
| Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 | 347 |
347 |
0.00%
|
|
| Adobe Premiere 6.5 | 533 |
533 |
0.00%
|
|
| Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 | 289 |
289 |
0.00%
|
|
| Average Performance Increase | 0.00% |
|||
In the past, DivX encoding has seen reasonable performance increases due to a faster FSB and increased memory bandwidth. With the move to the 1066MHz FSB we seem to have hit a limit, as there's absolutely no performance improvement here either. It looks like it will take much higher clock speeds for the 1066MHz FSB to make a difference.
| Audio/Video Encoding | ||||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
||
| MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10 | 434 |
434 |
0.00% |
|
| DivX Encoding | 49.9 |
49.9 |
0.00% |
|
| XV iD Encoding | 28.7 |
28.5 |
0.70% |
|
| Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0 | 2.32 |
2.32 |
0.00% |
|
| Average Performance Increase | 0.00% |
|||
Games have also been areas where faster FSB frequencies have benefited Intel,
but once again we see that the average performance increase is less than a
percent. Starwars Battlefront shows the greatest increase in performance at
2.8% due to the 1066MHz FSB.
| Gaming | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Doom 3 | 86.1 |
85.2 |
1.05% |
| Sims 2 | 46 |
46 |
0.00% |
| CS: Source | 156.8 |
156.4 |
0.26% |
| Halo | 88.4 |
88 |
0.45% |
| Far Cry | 133.5 |
132 |
1.12% |
| Star Wars Battlefront | 143 |
139 |
2.80% |
| Battlefield Vietnam | 239 |
239 |
0.00% |
| UT2004 | 59 |
58.6 |
0.68% |
| Wolf: ET | 98 |
96.9 |
1.12% |
| Warcraft III | 60 |
59 |
1.67% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.91% |
||
We weren't expecting to see much in the 3D rendering tests and the 1066MHz FSB did not disappoint with only a 0.74% average performance increase here.
| 3D Rendering | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (DirectX) | 280 |
282 |
0.71% |
| Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (OpenGL) | 339 |
342 |
0.88% |
| SPECapc 3dsmax 6 | 1.63 |
1.62 |
0.61% |
| Average Performance Increase | 0.74% |
||
Our final suite of tests are the professional applications tested by SPECviewperf
8. Here we see the largest overall gains provided by the 1066MHz FSB, with
performance improvements approaching 5%, and average performance improvements
approaching 3%. There's very little gain in compiling performance but in the
realm of 3D professional application performance the 1066MHz FSB begins to
show its worth. The gains here will only get better as clock speeds increase,
so maybe the 1066MHz FSB will pay off for those running demanding enough applications
to require a $1000+ 3.46EE CPU.
| Professional Apps | |||
1066MHz FSB |
800MHz FSB |
Performance Improvement |
|
| SPECviewperf 8 - 3dsmax-03 | 15.99 |
15.99 |
0.00% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - catia-01 | 12.62 |
12.08 |
4.28% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - light-07 | 12.89 |
12.41 |
3.72% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - maya-01 | 12.66 |
12.32 |
2.69% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - proe-03 | 15.9 |
15.31 |
3.71% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - sw-01 | 12.87 |
12.53 |
2.64% |
| SPECviewperf 8 - ugs-04 | 13.71 |
13.1 |
4.45% |
| Visual Studio 6 | 16.8 |
16.7 |
0.60% |
| Average Performance Increase | 2.76% |
||
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IntelUser2000 - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Intel is not doing bad. They are doing terrible. So terrible that you might as well call them dead. Probably will last till 2009 before they fill bankruptcy.To those people who say people in forums don't know anything and that there are other people stupid enough to buy Intel chips(I mean all Intel chips): Uhh, yeah, get your head straight, since AMD is closing with Intel very rapidly in marketshare, in server, desktop, and laptop, and that means that gamers actually do make a difference(albeit slowly) making other people buy computers. You think other people will buy P4's because of high clock speed? That's BS, since people who is stupid enough to buy Intel chips don't even know what clock speeds does. There are only a very few that knows computers JUST enough to say clock speed is good.
Tides - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
believe me, everyone wants the best they can get for the least cash.FinalFantasy - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Intel is not doing good right now. I know a lot of people rested their hopes for Intel to strike back with the release of this chip. But alas, we are still seeing the same problems with this chip as we've seen with it's predecessors.1. Way overpriced
2. Still getting whooped by AMD's 64-bit chips
The choice is clear here, buy an average AMD chip for a fraction of the price and still be able to outperform your friend's Intel EE based machine that he spent $2,500-3,000 on to build, while you spent about $1,500 (factor in price a person pays for an Intel EE chip and a couple of sticks of DDR2).
Pandaren - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
What the community here forgets is that the common person doesn't care for 10 extra FPS in a game or 3 seconds faster on that photoshop filter. They want a reliable, dependable computer with good support at a reasonable price.Dell provides that with Intel chips. People honestly don't care if the Intel chip is not faster.
Those of us who do care about performance and price/performance will build our own. I replaced my Dell with a homebuilt AMD box for that reason, but I don't expect everyone to do the same.
SLIM - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
"SLIMYou're forgetting DDR2 price which this needs in your so called Intel is "cheaper" comparison. If you want the same price setup you can get a FX-55 and really bring the wood."
ZEBO
Perhaps you didn't read my post correctly or didn't read the review, but the first paragraph in post #14 is a direct quote from the review (that's why there are QUOTATION MARKS around it). The two comments below the QUOTE were my views on Anand's conclusion of the 560 v 3800 comparison at the end of the review. Your comment actually agrees with what I said.
Tides - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
they would if they had itswatX - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
why doesnt intel just release a dual core platform or a 64bit chip already..gezz its like they are acting like ATI "we will release 64-vit chips only when apps start to use it" ...NotMrT - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Last time i remember AMD domminating this much was in the time of the thunderbirdsChapbass - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
#43:One thing that i can vouch for, being a college student: Almost every college student not "in the know" with building systems buys a dell....because theyre sold through the college. At least my college they are. DEFINITELY the most common systems around here (and it makes me sick) : P.
It seems like households are more into HP/compaq, where schools, both k-12 and college, are totally dell.
Just something ive noticed around where im from. YMMV.
-Chap
justly - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
I find it interesting that the page compareing an A64 3800+ to the P4 560 shows the P4 winning the multitasking content creation. Well that isn't the interesting part, but the fact that Intel only won this because it took all three SYSmark tests is (the SYSmark tests wher the only thing Intel won in this catagory). I guess what really amuses me is remembering a comment in a article a while back (I think it was Anand himself who made the comment) implying that the SYSmark scores did not reflect the rest of their testing and that it seemed to favor Intel.