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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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.