Tuesday, May 07, 2002

Introduction

Until now, the Intel Pentium 4 "Northwood's" primary distinction from its fore bearers has been its 512KB L2 cache. Today however, the "Northwood" has undergone an important modification that is meant to make it even more powerful than before.

While previous generations of the P4 have long been distinguished 100MHz, quad-pumped FSBs (for an effective frequency of 400MHz), the new P4 bumps that figure up to 133Mhz (533MHz quand-pumped).

This is, in effect, the only real change in the new P4 of today, but it is an important one. As a result of the new FSB frequency, the new "Northwood" is capable of pumping out 4.2GB/sec of data, compared to the 3.2GB/sec boasted by the former Northwood P4s. A side-effect of this new arrangement, however, is that PC800 memory just doesn't cut it -- it is, after all, limited to 3.2GB/sec. To fill in the void, and take advantage of the extra speed, users will need to install PC1066 memory, which is designed precisely with the new FSB in mind. Of course, a compatible PC1066 mainboard will also be required.

The Intel Pentium 4 processor. Many things, and many technologies distinguish the Pentium 4 from the earlier generation of the Pentium III. The differences are so pronounced, in fact, that we've dedicated an entire article to describing the Pentium 4 architecture which you can consult by clicking on the link.
Below is a list of the Pentium 4 "Northwood" 2.4GHz's principal characteristics: Cache L1 = 8k Cache L2 = 512K FSB = 133MHz quad pumped Manufacturing process = 0.13 micron Support for SSE2 Voltage = 1.5 volts Current consumed @ 2.4Ghz = 49.8 amps Power dissipation @ 2.4Ghz= 57.8 watts Current consumer @ 2.53Ghz = 51.5 amps Power dissipated @ 2.53Ghz= 59.3 watts

Next: The test setup.