Intel Pentium 4

Price cuts, new models announced; more price cuts coming

Pentium 4 price cuts, new models

Intel really, really wants you to make your next processor a Pentium 4. The company announced hefty price cuts of current models April 15th and further cut prices later the following month, culminating in what can best be characterized as dramatic price-slashing in late August, at which point some P4 models were priced significantly below a comparably clocked P3. In addition, new P4 models extend both the high end and low end of the P4 lineup.

As of April, the high end Pentium 4 ran at 1.7 GHz and is priced at US$352. That translates into a mere $585 Canadian street price.

The April 29 price cuts saw the 1.5GHz Pentium 4 drop in price from $519 to $256, a 51-percent trim. And the 1.4GHz P4 drops 49 percent to US$193 -- making it the same price as both the 1.3GHz Pentium 4 and the 933MHz Pentium III, and $32 less than the 1GHz Pentium III. (Details at The Inquirer.) These price cuts should give Intel back a commanding lead over AMD, whose Athlon currently tops out at 1.3 GHz. AMD, meanwhile, fought back with a new round of price cuts to its product line on April 30.

"Street" pricelist (after April 29 cuts)

The P4 lineup as of Sept. 15, 2001.

Intel no longer ships "free" RDRAM with its P4 processors. 128MB of RDRAM, as of Sept. 15, sells for about $75.

MicroPGA (Socket 478) versions of the P4 at 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8 GHz speeds are available at nominally higher prices.

Here's a detailed description of the hardware and software used in our tests:

Hardware configuration:

• motherboard: Intel D850GB, ATA100 port, AGP4x slot, USB, 16650 I/O
• CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1.7 GHz (retail) with Intel fan
• RAM: Kingston RDRAM PC800 256MB (identified as Samsung RAM in Intel's CPIU box)
• Hard Drive: IBM 75GPX 7200RPM ATA100 60GB
• 1.44FD: Panasonic 1.44
• DVD drive: Toshiba M1502 DVD drive 16x EIDE
• Video card: ATI Radeon DDR 64MB AGP4x
• NIC: Intel LAN 10/100 PCI (built in to D850GBAL)
• Case/power: Landmark ATX-299 with SH-340W power
• OS: Windows Millennium and Windows XP beta 2

Application:

• DVD Player: Power DVD
• Corel Draw 10
• 3D Mark 2000
• 3D Mark 2001
• Sisoft Sandra 2001
• Windows Media Player

Hardware Notes:

Currently, the fastest Pentium 4 models are those supported by the i850 chipset, combined with expensive RDRAM ("RAMbus") RIMM memory modules. In our test unit, this memory was supplied by Kingston and ran at 400 MHz.

The Intel motherboard upon which our test system was based includes some interesting features that look forward to Microsoft's just released list of specifications for PCs "Designed for Windows XP."

Among the specifications dictated by Microsoft for this designation are the following requirements:

The system must not display any BIOS text during start-up and must meet these start-up times:

• Cold boot to desktop in 30 seconds or less.
• Resume from hibernate in 20 seconds or less.
• Resume from standby in 5 seconds or less.

The Intel mainboard meets these requirements. The usual POST (Power-on Self Test) screen visible when powering up most PCs is hidden by default and is only visible by pressing F2 at startup time. The POST screen reveals various options for setting up boot devices, enabling or disabling onboard audio and so on.

The 1.7GHz Pentium 4 we tested was a standard retail unit equipped with a standard Intel cooling fan, inside a Landmark ATX-299 case with a 340W power supply. The onboard CPU temperature rose to a toasty 40 degrees Celsius (120 degrees F) after running a battery of benchmark tests with 3D Mark 2001, after which the system crashed and spontaneously rebooted. We experienced no other problems in subsequent tests with 3D Mark 2000, SiSoft Sandra and other programs, leading us to suspect a bug in the graphics driver or the 3D Mark 2001 benchmark test as a possible suspect in this anomaly.

We've been watching with interest recent claims that the P4 can't run at full speed under sustained CPU loads made by Bert McComas in an article entitled Can the Pentium 4 Recover? His findings have been refuted by most other tests and are the subject of heated discussions on Ars Technica and Hard|OCP. These sites have not found evidence of an alleged throttling problem, which McComas notes is detailed in the Intel Thermal Design Guide. Page 23 of this guide says that if performance critical applications drive the CPU above a predetermined temperature, the CPU is halted with a 50% duty cycle (alternating 2 microseconds on; 2 microseconds off) until it cools down.

We considered our 3D Mark 2000 benchmark result of 5245 (1024x768, 16-bit) fairly impressive until we compared results with others using MadOnion.com's Online Result Browser. There were dozens of users boasting scores in the 8000 to 9000 range. Interestingly, not a single result in the top 20 was obtained with an ATI graphics card. The top 13 scores were all obtained with NVIDIA GeForce2 series cards, typically a GeForce2 Ultra or GTS/Pro. We're currently continuing with our tests; we'll update this report as more conclusive results emerge.

As noted in our look at the ATI All-in-Wonder RADEON, the RADEON was a problematic component, at least until we obtained updated display drivers. Its lacklustre benchmark performance is one thing, but the fact that the bundled drivers incorrectly displayed so many graphical components in the 3D Mark 2000 and 2001 benchmarks (or, in some cases, doesn't display them at all!) we considered a far more serious problem.  Fortunately, recent driver revisions greatly improve the display fidelity of this graphics card, finally providing 3D graphics performance and reliability to match its strong video capture or TV output features -- both areas in which the RADEON VIVO or All-in-Wonder versions excel.

At least until the RADEON 8500 becomes available, the best bet for no-compromise PC gaming is an NVIDIA GeForce 3. Be sure to get the updated drivers for this card, too. The so-called "Detonator XP" drivers released Sept. 10 greatly improve performance.

Test Results

We were surprised that some of the animations in 3D Mark 2001 -- particularly the "trees in the field" segment in the demo portion of the program, were still so sluggish on our test system. If a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 and a 64MB RADEON DDR can't manage more than 20 frames per second, we think the designers are aiming a bit too high, perhaps! In short, the performance in these tests, while undeniably faster than on a lesser computer, isn't that much better. The same graphics card in a 500 MHz Celeron with the same memory configuration gives ample proof that much of the muscle these tests exercise is in the graphics card, not the CPU.

It was only when we invoked the full-screen "Ambient" visualizations while playing some music in Windows Media Player 7 that our jaws dropped. The animations were far faster than on our 500 MHz baseline system, and perfectly in sync with the music. It's a completely different experience. You practically get dizzy watching it. It's just great.

Northwood & Brookdale

The Pentium 4 is now shipping in a new 0.13 micron and pin-package configuration that will, in all likelihood, make current P4 motherboards effectively obsolete. The processor known as "Northwood," powered by a new Intel i845 chipset codenamed Brookdale, features SDRAM support, with a DDR variant expected in Q1 of 2002. Northwood is about half the size of the original P4's 217-mm square size and, of course, requires a different motherboard design.

Conclusion

The Pentium 4, despite what you might have read, is significantly faster than AMD's Athlon in certain tasks (most notably, in content creation tasks such as digital video encoding), and considerably faster than the fastest Pentium III by most benchmarks. With that said, the "mispredictions" produced by the longer data pipeline cause the P4 to be somewhat less effective than a P3 or Athlon processor at some tasks. In general, an Athlon will outperform a P4 at the same clock speed. The P4 can now justly claim the performance crown primarily due to the virtues of brute force. A 1.4GHz Athlon may be able to keep pace with a 1.7GHz P4 in overall performance, but a 2GHz P4 still takes the crown.

Intel's aggressive price cuts clearly suggests the company is determined to push the P4 into the market segment currently held by the PIII and, increasingly, by AMD's speedy Athlon chips. The new pricing, we think, will help Intel regain some of the market share it has lost in recent months. (Of course, AMD isn't taking this lying down. Only days after Intel announced its cuts, AMD slashed its own prices, with even greater reductions.)

A 1.5GHz Pentium 4 is 78% faster than a 1 GHz Pentium III, for example, in content creation performance with Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 4.1. In gaming, too, the 1.5GHz P4 surpasses the P3, turning in Quake III arena scores between 41 and 44 percent faster than a 1.0 GHz P3. Of course, when you do the math, it's clear that a 1.5 GHz P3, if one existed, would probably perform similarly, but this is perhaps the whole point the P4 exists. Its newer architecture once again brings headroom for the future of Intel's product line.

However, this bright future doesn't necessarily mean that early adopters will not suffer from "the 1.0 syndrome." The latest P4 design uses a new 478-pin "MicroPGA" socket that, we think, will sooner or later will most likely render current P4 purchases effectively "obsolete," at least in terms of future upgrade options.

As usual, the top-of-the-line processor always carries a hefty price premium over mid-range models. However, with the new price drops on 1.5 and 1.4 GHz models, these chips for the first time are worthy of consideration as alternatives to a Pentium III or AMD Athlon family processor. The release of the i845 "Brookdale" chipset in early Sept. finally put to rest the argument that Intel's reliance on expensive and semi-proprietary RDRAM memory was a mistake, but, at least until DDR SDRAM alternatives emerge based upon VIA's P4X266 chipset or Intel's own DDR chipset due in early 2002, it's finally a viable desktop alternative to the venerable Pentium III, now slated to be discontinued in early December 2001.

Thanks to ATIC for the loan of the 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 system and Leadtek WinFast GeForce 3 cards used in our tests.