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% |
63 Comments
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Beenthere - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Intel has simply run out of Hail Mary solutions to their unending design, engineering, production, sales, management, and marketing problems. Even Wall Street knows this by now.Wesley Fink - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
For those who asked, the 1000 lot Intel price for the 3.46EE is $999.coldpower27 - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Well you could get a direct comparison between the Athlon 64 3700+ vs the Pentium 4 560 as those 2 processors are priced pretty directly against each other on Newegg, though their MSRP differ in actuality.64Bit Windows isn't likely to be released until Prescott 2M with Intel EM64T is released in Q1 2005. We will have to see though if Microsoft will released in 2005 WinXP 64.
jimmy43 - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
#14 I was thinking the same thing. The 3500 would probably still win or tie in most of the categories and it costs nearly half the price of an intel 560. I feel like Anand is trying to be fair to both companies and reccomending a bit of both. Realistically, AMD has Intel beat in every market segment... by alot. It's also funny how everyone is COMPLETELY forgetting that AMD's proccessors are 64 bit so in a year or so, you will get a considerable free speed boost and youl be able to run the latest OS. Is that not a huge advantage? Come on, people need to stop overlooking that its really bugging me.DukeN - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Once again, Intel shows why it's the Sony of the CPU world with terrible products terribly overpriced.Gnoad - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
I might have missed it, but how much will Intel price this at? Considering it's an EE, one can guess about $900. If thats true, they MIGHT sell 3 or 4 of them.skunkbuster - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
underdog in terms of market shareGhandiInstinct - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Since when did the world spin where a chip that is superior in 90% of chip tasks is the underdog?stephenbrooks - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
So... I was thinking of investing some money in shares. You don't think AMD might happen to be a good bet right around now, would you?SLIM - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
Great review as always, but there's always room for improvement:)[/begin nitpicking]
"So in the end, who takes the crown? AMD or Intel? The 3800+ took four category wins, while the Pentium 4 560 only took two, however with the exception of the gaming and professional apps category, AMD's victories were not overwhelming - especially once you take into account the fact that the 3800+ is priced much higher than the Pentium 4 560. Now that you can purchase at least a couple of 915 based motherboards for less than $130 the total cost of ownership for the Intel platform doesn't eat into the CPU price advantage. For the most part we'd say the 3800+ is faster than the Pentium 4 560 but not always worth the added cost. It's unusual but in many cases, the Pentium 4 560 is actually the bargain high-end chip of the two."
Alrighty, two comments:
1) It's bad science to make a detailed comparison, and then in the conclusion talk about switching the chipset and memory in order to make the price comparison hold up. (Maybe include the numbers from a 915 review to back up the assertion that the 560 will still perform just as well with 915/DDR).
2) I'd be curious to see how the 3500+ would hold up in these same comparisons since it is about $150 cheaper than the 560.
Bonus nitpick:
4 of the graphs don't include the new 3.46ee (ACD on page 9 and 3 games benches); I don't know if that was intentional or not. [/end nitpicking]
Thanks again for the best reviews.