Northwood

[XEnigma88]

Is the only difference between the current Pentium 4 and the new Northwood Pentium 4 that it is using a new core, has doubled L2 Cache, and that it is using a .13 micron die, or are there other differences?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

apparently the pathetic FPU capability of the P4 will be remedied to an unknown extent with the introduction of northwood... but ill believe that ONLY when i see it!


Religious wars are 2 groups of people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.

 

[XEnigma88]

It would be cool if Intel finally got it right. I'm not biased towards AMD or Intel, I just go for the better processor, but lately Intel has been screwing up. Intel has done it in the past, so I'm sure that they have the potential to have another winning processor if they can straighten themselves out. Competition is good for everyone!

Rhode Island is neither a road, nor an island. Discuss!

 

[Kelledin]

From what we've seen of engineering samples, the Northwood in its last known state basically performed more-or-less like a higher clocked P4. There was a link posted somewhere on these boards...I'll have to find it...but not tonight. I'm about to crash atm.

Kelledin

"/join #hackerz. See the Web. DoS interesting people."

 

[mbetea]

so, the current p4 2ghz is going for $520 or there-abouts? so what would the expected "superior" northwood go for? $700 or so?

 

[charliec2uk]

Why is the P4's FPU so pathetic next to that of the Athlon. I mean Intel ca design a good FPU. Itaniums FPU absaloulty flattens Ultrasparcs, Athlons and Alpha's. The 20 stage pipeline I think referes to the core pipeline through the ALU's and not the Maths co-processor. So why does P4's FPU fall flat?

Democracy Bernad, it must be stopped!

 

[Guest]

It only has 2 i believe (FPU units) while the athlon has 3. You have a extra one you will do better of course.

-Spuddy

<font color=red>Being Evil Is Good. Cause I Can Be A Prick And Get Away With It.</font color=red> :lol:

 

[lhgpoobaa]

as far as i understand it (and my word aint gospel by any stretch of the definition lol)
the FPU of the 0.18 micron P4 was hamstrung for the following reasons:

1. the architecture of the FPU did not lend itself well to extreme Mhz, thus had to be scaled back/redesigned.

2. by first releasing the pentium4 as 0.18 micron and not 0.13, everything was physically larger, and to keep the core size down, and thus yields per silicon wafer as high as possible, some aspects of the P4 had to be sacrificed for the greater good... thats why people are looking forward to the 0.13 micron die... more cache, smaller, cooler, faster, and room for a more effective athlon spanking FPU (or so intel hopes)

3. they hoped that the weak FPU wouldnt be as noticable, covered up by the greater Mhz and supported by more SSE2 enabled applications.


from a scientific background (as i am), i prefer that No.3 was not the case, as the FPU traditionally utilises a 80bit register to store and calculate a floating point number, while SSE2 only uses a 64bit register, thus any calculation using the FPU is inherintely more accurate (according to the math a 80bit fpu number is 2^16 times more accurate). and floating point calculations by definition have no simple integer value. number like Pie are floating point. a small point maybe to people who play quake for 8 hours a day *grin*, but possibly of concern to scientiests and people that require accuracy.

allright. rant over.

Is that a Northwoody in your pocket or are you just eXPited to see me?<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by lhgpoobaa on 10/26/01 06:30 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mr_gobbledegook]

I wouldn't be surprised if Intel make some extra enhancments to the p4 core, Intel would be just damn lazy if they just added more cache.
I'm sure they are tweaking other parts of the processor especially as they moved the release date to Jan 02.

<font color=purple>~* K6-2 @ 333MHz *~
I don't need a 'Gigahertz' chip to surf the web just yet ;-)</font color=purple>

 

[charliec2uk]

One would hope so. Consider that a 2Ghz P4 costs a round £450 and is beaten on some tests by a £200 Athlon XP. If Intel want the world to forget about P3 which compared well clock for clock against the Athlon, then they should really do two things. Get that FPU sorted and demonstrate that the P4 can knock the best AMD has for six, then do something about the Price. I refuse to believe that a 2Ghz chip is £200 more expensive than a 1.8 Ghz chip.

So to return to the land of fact for a second:

Northwood with have:

A .13 micron core.
512 Kbytes of L2 Cache,
Data prefetch and so forth.

We hope it will have:

Improved FPU performance,
More FPU pipelines,
533 Mhz FSB

Maybe someone (Hint: Raystonn) can shed some light on this?

Charlie

Democracy Bernad, it must be stopped!

 

[Matisaro]

Raystonn cant and wont tell you anything about the northwood due to his nda.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[zengeos]

Well, chances are, we'll start seeing previews/reviews of various systems using the Northwood at least a month before they are generally available. That should give folks plenty of time to prepare for it; to decide whether it offers the performance increase to make it worth the upgrade, or whether they will wait for awhile longer.

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!

 

[Matisaro]

Yeah, I hope it is as good as raystonn hints, I would buy it if it could justify whatever additional costs it posed to me.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Guest]

your referring to a discussion you can find <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new"> here </A>

In that thread you will also find some math I did on the benches that clearly show the tested cpu was not faster clock for clock in Sandra than a current P4 (both on a pathetic 845 board though). I did some more thinking, and I'm now convinded this was not Northwood, but a 512kb Xeon version of the Willamette (probably on .13). I thought I read somewhere this cpu was on intel's roadmap. It would explain a lot.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[XEnigma88]

The reason I ask this question is because next year I am planning on building a new PC and from what it looks like, my choice will be between the Northwood and the Thoroughbred. If Intel learned from their mistakes on the Williamette (FPU,less effecient pipeline) the Northwood could be a good option because they are planning price cuts also <A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/26100101.htm" target="_new">http://www.theinquirer.net/26100101.htm</A>.

:lol: <b>Rhode Island is neither a road, nor an island. Discuss!</b> :lol:

 

[Guest]

Well some companies do what they call in the biz as "R and D" so you will always have to pay more for that "R and D" cause "R and D" isnt cheap. Hey Matisaro your so silly and little and your a silly little troll too hehe.

-Spuddy

<font color=red>Being Evil Is Good. Cause I Can Be A Prick And Get Away With It.</font color=red> :lol:

 

[FatBurger]

Hey, did you know AMD ranked in the top 15 in receiving US patents last year? More patents than any other semiconducter company.

Course, that's off their website

<font color=orange>Quarter <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>

 

[zengeos]

Actually, they were one of the top 5 or 7 US based companies receiving patents last year, I think. 12th or 15th of companies worldwide.

Intel was around number 20, I think.

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!

 

[Crashman]

Intel bases their prices on a certain scale with the fastest processor being over $500. That means that if the Northwookd is introduced at 2.0 and 2.2GHz, the 2.2 will go just over $500 and the 2.0 at aorund $300. They don't base their price on performance, they simply follow their price scale.

Back to you Tom...

 

[Guest]

Patents and R and D are two differebt things. We all know that Rambus did the same.

-Spuddy

<font color=red>Being Evil Is Good. Cause I Can Be A Prick And Get Away With It.</font color=red> :lol:

 

[Guest]

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by SpudMuffin on 10/26/01 08:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>