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
Final Words
So there you have it folks - the 1066MHz FSB does absolutely nothing for performance. The 3.46EE does manage to outperform its 3.4GHz/800MHz FSB predecessor, but the margin of improvement is negligible. Intel desperately needs a win here and other than the more affordable price of the Pentium 4 560, there's very little going for the CPU king these days. It will take higher speed Prescott CPUs or dual core in order for the added bandwidth of the 1066MHz FSB to truly be of any use - and it will take lower latency DDR2 memory to finally give the latest Pentium 4 platforms lower latency memory access than the ones they replaced.
We can only wonder what Intel is thinking, releasing an entirely new chipset just four months after they released the original. Granted with very few 925X designs on the market right now, there shouldn't be too many upset 925X owners, but it's still a very strange situation. Either the 1066MHz FSB is going to make its way to CPUs faster than we have anticipated, or Intel has just introduced the world's first useless FSB improvement for the next 9 months.
The move to the 1066MHz FSB is in sharp contrast to the past two FSB bumps that we've seen from Intel. The introduction of the 533MHz FSB back in 2002 yielded up to a 12% gain in gaming performance, and a 3 - 6% gain in individual applications as it was paired with PC1066 RDRAM. Then came the 800MHz migration that showed a 3 - 9% increase in gaming performance, and just under a 12% increase in professional application performance. But with the move to the 1066MHz FSB we have a platform launch that, in the spirit of the 925X and 915 launches, does virtually nothing for performance.
Is it worth it? Sure, 1066 will be worth it when there are higher clock speed (or dual core) processors to take advantage of it. But given that Intel isn't planning on ramping clock speed up too high anytime soon, we'd say that the 1066MHz FSB is best left for late next year, when more useful implementations of it will appear.
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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.