Pentium 4: Northwood or Prescott?

[dodecahedron]

what's your opinion?
which is better?

(i might be getting a P4 3.0 or 3.2 soon).

according to benchmarks (THG) they're more or less the same...in some benches Northwood is better in some Prescott.
user opinions/experiences appreciated.

anyone know how they compare in being overclocking friendly?

[BurninMan921]

THG! Yuck! Try Anandtech, they have a good Prescott Vs. Northwood comparison.

Me, I'd grab a Northwood. A bit faster, a bit cheaper, a bit cooler.

And you may want to wait until after Aug. 22; Intel will be dropping the prices of the P4's. Everything (will, high end anyway) will drop down about 1 notch (a 3.4Ghz will be the same cost as the 3.2 is now, the 3.2 will be the cost of the 3.0).

EDIT: For the OC info, head over to www.overclockers.com and look at the CPU database. It'll tell ya what everyone has gotten it up to, and with what cooling setup, plus a ton of other info.

[cfitz]

according to benchmarks (THG) they're more or less the same...

Really? When Prescott first came out most benchmarks showed the older Northwood had the performance edge at the same clock frequency in most scenarios. The massive pipeline of the Prescott typically worked against it, despite the Prescott's improved prediction logic and larger L2 cache. I thought the word was that Prescott wasn't going to show a real performance edge over Northwood until the clock speed got bumped up beyond what Northwood can support - the Prescott core scales better with frequency than the Northwood.

One thing there is no doubt about is that Prescott runs hotter than Northwood. How does 103 Watts vs. 82 Watts for a 3.2 grab you?

As for overclocking, I haven't been keeping up so I don't know what people are finding in actual practice, but the better scaling with frequency should help the Prescott's cause while the higher power dissipation should hurt it.

When I got my 3.0, the decision was simple: Prescott was slower, hotter and more expensive. Naturally, I got the Northwood.

cfitz

[BurninMan921]

Remember cfitz, he was looking at Toms benchmarks; not the most reliable thing around

At think S478 mostly tops out around 3.6Ghz, no matter what core. I'm thinking of getting one of the 3.4GHz cpus after the price drop; I love the Athlon 64's (overall faster for what I want), but I miss Hyperthreading...

[hoxlund]

im liking my free upgrade to prescott from northwood, im glad i made the switch

[cfitz]

Remember cfitz, he was looking at Toms benchmarks; not the most reliable thing around

LOL Okay. Message understood.

im liking my free upgrade to prescott from northwood, im glad i made the switch

Do you have specific reasons why you like it better? Is it doing something measurably better for you? Or are you just happy to get something new for free?

cfitz

[hoxlund]

most of it is new for free, ive noticed its faster on encoding mp3s and movies

[Shredder]

I think if you are gonna get Prescott, it's probably better to get the latest Intel 9x5 chipset motherboard as it is designed to accomodate faster speed that Prescott has to offer soon.

Otherwise, getting Northwood is ok. Although Socket 478 life span will be pretty short because of the new socket, LGA775. Current Prescott generates enough heat that it makes Athlon XP, a low heat CPU.

[Kennyshin]

I looked for DDR 2 memory modules at Pricewatch.com, Danawa.co.kr and Enuri.com. They are price comparison sites.

256MB DDR-II module for nearly US$90 was the lowest price I could find. That's almost the price of 512MB Registered ECC memory module I use for Xeon 533MHz FSB systems.

DDR 2 memory availability in July 2004 is like the DDR I memory availability in late 2000. In 2001, Crucial, a Micron division, began to lower the price of 256MB DDR PC2100 modules down to US$29 per piece.

PCI Express devices are not very easy to find. The first motherboard chipset to have 4 SATA channels in addition to the usual 2 PATA channels is the 915/925 series. It wil take some time for component manufacturers like Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu, LG, Micron, Seagate, BTC, and so on to make better use of the new features.

Prescott processor itself is undergoing some transformation. Anandtech also recommends waiting for the next stepping.

Two motherboards have at least 8 S-ATA, IEEE 1394b, 2 10/100/1000Mbps LAN, 54Mbps wireless in addition to the standard 925X features. I'd like to have one of the two when DDR-II modules become as affordable as DDR-I. Zalman has a good cooler for Prescotts, the new all-copper 7000B with Fan-mate 2. I have a 7000 AlCu on a Northwood 2.4B, and two other Zalman CPU coolers.

http://www2.pcbee.co.kr/channel/09/read.asp?num=4449

[cfitz]

ive noticed its faster on encoding mp3s and movies

Yeah, encoding is one activity that isn't hurt by, and can even be helped by, Prescott's long pipeline. Encoding is a pretty regular operation with not much branching.

Is your Prescott the same clock speed as your Northwood was? If so, can you estimate how much percentage improvement you see when encoding?

cfitz

[hoxlund]

yeah its the exact same speed, as you can see from my sig

its probably about 20% faster overall

[pranav81]

20% makes a huge difference.


::Pranav::

[Kennyshin]

Have you tried encoding MPEG-2 HD 1920x1080 video using WMV9 codec? WMV 10 beta might perform better with Prescotts. It used to take a very long time. Right now, I'm still copying some HD .tp files to the other PC connected through 100Mbps LAN. WMV9/10 could help me a little if CPUs were a few times faster.

[dr_st]

There is a number of task where the Prescott excels, such as the aforementioned encoding. Here it can really kick Northwood's ass. Unfortunately there aren't many tasks like this.

All in all, when performance is concerned, the CPUs are pretty equal at the same clock speed. And this is why Prescott excessive heat generation works against it.

I see no reason at all to use a Prescott. I had a 2.8GHz Prescott on an Intel Rocklake board. The first thing I saw when I installed Intel's drivers and utilities is "Your system is too hot". The CPU was around 60 degrees celsius when idle and could reach 70+ when under load. I admit that the case was crappy and there wasn't enough ventilation. But some of my friends who had Northwood CPUs in cases just as crappy never reached these temps. I changed to a Northwood 3.0GHz (OK, I also changed the mobo and the case in the process). Now it runs between 30 and 40, if you believe ASUS temps, and between 40 and 50, if you don't. There is a difference.

[Kennyshin]

South Korean PC case manufacturers like GMC are only happy to release new models. Same for the cooling fan manufacturers like Zalman. Zalman made a big success in the summer of 2001 when Athlon XP Thunderbird processors got the attention among many overclockers who wanted more efficient but silent cooling solutions. No more fun after that since both Intel and AMD tried hard to keep their latest CPUs running cooler.

[pranav81]

Good heatsinks make a lot of difference.A friend of mine has a 2.6 Northwood with a superb (I dont remember the name ) heatsink.Believe me,when he removes the fan over the heatsink the temp. of the CPU is 52 C under heavy load.He had his friend bring it for him from Singapore.It costed him about 80 USD.


::Pranav::

[Kennyshin]

Many all-copper heatsink + 92mm fan sets cost less than US$50 now. If it was US$80, perhaps it was Swiftec or another brand known to provide the best cooling for consumer use. I don't know whether Zalman still uses Adda fans. I'd like some more 12cm Adda fans.

[pranav81]

I have a machine with 2 case fans from Adda.The HS fan is also Adda.The machine is quite old now,but the fans are working flawlessly.I am thinking of removing case fans and installing into the machine I currently use.


::Pranav::