Like getting the keys to a rare sports car, I took the new platform for a test drive and found it to be everything I expected. I found amazing performance gains, pitfalls, and many interesting quirks that come with any advance in technology.
The Intel EE is the first desktop processor featuring a dual core design to be given to the mercy of reviewers. Dual core means that the processor has two full execution cores, both running at the same clock, in one physical processor.
In the case of the Extreme Edition , the two cores are each running at a modest 3. After waiting more than a year for dual core to arrive, lets get right to the details and take a look at what Intel is up to with the new Smithfield Core. The Prescott Core. The performance of the new Intel dual core processors, in particular the Pentium Extreme Edition we tested here, is starting a problem where performance is difficult to judge and measure. The Athlon 64 high end processors and the Pentium 4 XE processors and series processors that are clocked faster than the 3.
And anywhere you saw the Athlon 64 out perform a single core Prescott at 3. Of course, this dependent on the single threaded, single tasking scenarios. If your applications are heavily multithreaded , such as most high end 3D rendering applications like 3D Studio, CineBench or KribiBench, then the added benefits of dual core and HyperThreading are going to probably boost performance of the Pentium line up over that of the Athlon In multitasking it gets a lot more complicated. Multiple applications run at the same time, either in the background or foreground, take up CPU cycles.
With a dual core processor, you have theoretically twice as many cycles to use than the clock speed indicates. Assuming you are using an OS that can handle multiple threads and processors like Windows XP Pro then having more applications open and working will have less of an affect on your overall system performance with a dual core processor compared to a single core processor. This is a lot more complicated than just operating systems if you include the complexities of different CPU architectures between AMD and Intel, different memory controllers and different clock speeds and IPCs.
There really is no clear cut mathematical formula for finding the fastest, optimal processor solution. Otherwise, why would you need me? In our light multitasking scenario, the AMD platform came out on top, though its lead in the benchmark was diminshed due to the other applications running in the background. This leads us to the assumption that for those users in a light or no multitasking environment, choosing their processor based on the best performance for the users primary applications still makes the most sense.
Further testing here at PC Perspective will surely come across it. That is not a small chunk of change. We already mentioned that the XE and any previous Intel chipsets for the LGA socket would not support the new dual core processors.
A talk with the folks at NVIDIA revealed that though the chipset does support dual core processors, its up to the individual motherboard manufacturers to implement the corrent support for them on their product. Here, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3. Current page: Pentium Processor Extreme Edition Pentium Processor Extreme Edition Topics Components. See all comments 2. How much can the Extreme Edition be had for now?
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