SimHQ.com - Technology Zone - Review: Intel P4 Prescott and 3.40GHz Extreme Edition

	WebMark 04	SysMark 04	PC Mark 04	3DMark 03 (CPU Only)	Main Concept
Prescott 3.2E	132	191	4945	839	30.51
EE 3.4GHz	144	211	5342	956	30.75
Athlon 3400+	209	182	4022	763	42.73
FX-51	122	185	4108	899	39

Game Scores - 1024 x 768

	Falcon 4.0	Ghost Recon	IL2 Sturmovik	Comanche 4	FS2002	F1 Challenge
Prescott 3.2E	57	176	90	64.25	34	84
EE 3.4GHz	58	198	103	77.36	35	89
Athlon 3400+	64	176	103	73.10	33	84
FX-51	66	179	108	72.28	36	85

Game Scores - 1600 x 1200

	Falcon 4.0	Ghost Recon	IL2 Sturmovik	Comanche 4	FS2002	F1 Challenge
Prescott 3.2E	53	97	70	60.03	32	59
EE 3.4GHz	55	103	68	68.55	33	62
Athlon 3400+	59	89	70	69.84	31	51
FX-51	60	91	72	65.08	34	57

Benchmarking Comments

The synthetic scores are mostly in Intel’s favor. Main Concept shows decided advantages to using Hyper-Threading. One thing about SSE and HT… if you can find programs that really take advantage of the features, they can make a profound impact on performance. WebMark 2004 is new for reviewers and just came out from Bapco.

It tests the following applications:

Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® 6.0
Macromedia® Flash Player v7.0.14.0
Macromedia® Shockwave Player v8.5.1
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106.xpsp1
Microsoft® Windows Media Player® 9 series
JavaSM Applets (SUNSM JRE 1.4.1)
Microsoft® .NET® Framework v1.1

We decided to use it to demonstrate web related performance.

The game scores show that Intel and AMD are, for the most part, neck and neck. We are working with Ubisoft on a LOMAC benchmark. We have taken a number of tests but would like to see us and them working together for a single benchmark to use. As expected, LOMAC is just brutal to systems. It will be exciting to see how it scales for years down the road. We look forward to adding SP4 and F4:OIR to our list as they come out. We also hear from Microsoft that they may be looking to create a benchmark for Flight Simulator 2004.

Conclusion

We expected Prescott to perform well and certainly it did. It’s right inline with what we expected from Intel’s 3.20GHz offering. Since it has a reduced die size, there are more benefits relating to price. It’s cheap at just $278 per 1K lots. A good argument could be made that they 3.20E is a fantastic value when comparing the performance and price. I would recommend it for those looking at Intel solutions without question.

I will caution overclockers however. The heat generated by this CPU is significant. Don’t expect much headroom for increasing the MHz. Expect Intel to continue with steppings while trying to get the heat down.

The 3.40GHz EE is also very fast. It should be because it’s going to be at a $999 price point. It’s hard to encourage anyone to buy the EE at that price because it’s not that much faster than the other processors. With the 3.40GHz release however, prices should be falling on the 3.20GHz Extreme Edition.

Click on the thumbnails below for an enlarged version of the file.

Intel will likely be looking to move the EE to Prescott down the road. This will be a great move for them and for consumers. The reduced die size will drop the price and hopefully by then, the heat issues will be better. 3MB of cache will be awfully sweet too!

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