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%

Does the 1066MHz FSB Improve Memory Performance? Intel D925XECV2: Intel’s Enthusiast motherboard
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  • Gnoad - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link

    Wow, Intel just got the crap kicked out them...
  • GhandiInstinct - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link

    It's good to have you back Anand, feels like Jordan came back to the Bulls. :)
  • shabby - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link

    Meh, nothing special.

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