We received a sample of a production ready motherboard with Intels 845 and a CPU fitting into its new Socket 478 from different sources within the industry. The processor turned out to be equipped with the Willamette core. This article therefore can only be viewed as preview of the two products, although they worked flawlessly for several hours in our lab.
According to unconfirmed information Intel plans to offer both Willamette and the new Northwood core for some time. The schedule therefore, however, is unclear.
Other sources quote Juli, 28, as the date when the ban on i845 finally will be lifted. Intel then wants to ship the chipset in mass quantities to its customers, the official launch of commercially available products may happen shortly thereafter.
This is not unlikely, as plenty of motherboards with the i845 were already demoed at Computex in June. The highly anticipated "Brookdale-2" or "Brookdale-DDR" for DDR-SDRAM may not appear so soon. Intels roadmaps still schedule it for Q1, 2002 - at least, until now. As first mainboards with Brookdale-DDR from third party vendors were shown at Computex, this may change.
To protect our sources in the industry we had to black ink some parts of the pictures. No other modifications were done to the images, please bear with us.
Details on Northwood and i845
Northwood will be the first die shrink of the Pentium 4 to 0,13 Micron. As usual, lower voltages and higher clockspeeds will come with that. For the beginning, even cooling the 42 plus million transistors may become easier - until clock speeds get into the 3 GHz range. That "plus" comes from the fact that Intel is rumoured to double both the L1 and L2 caches to 16 and 512 KByte for Northwood respectively.
Further details on the general Pentium 4 architecture, labeled NetBurst by Intel, can be found in this report along with lots of schematics. Currently this feature is only available in english, please bear with us.
Socket 478 is bad news for people willing to upgrade their P4 machines after a few months already: The socket requires new heatsinks, old ones will not fit. As the socket is much smaller, it could not hold the huge heatsinks anymore and Intel built a very solid frame around the socket as the new retention mechanism. Heatsinks we saw were also equipped with bigger fans (mounting holes were 60 millimeters apart, instead of 50). As there's also electrical differences adapters also seem unlikely to appear.
The i845 chipset only brings a new Northbridge, or MCH in Intel jargon. Soutbridges (ICH with Intel) will be the well-known ICH-2 with new steppings.
Memory performance
We use our own tool tecMem, which will be publicly available later this year, to evaluate memory performance. Here we put i845 with a Willamette at 1500 MHz and PC-133-memory (CAS latency 2) against a Pentium 4 with PC800 memory.
The transfer curves also indicate the caches sizes: 8 KByte L1, 256 KByte L2, even for the CPU made for Socket 478.
Our sample of a P4 for Socket 478 was clocked around 20 MHz higher than the production Pentium 4, which explains the slightly higher scores for cached transfers. The different clock speeds may be explained by a pre-production motherboard that had not had its clock generator locked properly.
Benchmark Considerations
As stated at the beginning this review deals with pre-production parts. The CPU will get at least one other stepping for launch, as will the chipset. This may not only result in less compatibility issues but also turned out to bring higher performance for other products in the past.
To make comparison a little easier, we also included a projection of production parts, apart from the acutal scores taken in the lab. The projection is based on the performance delta of a Pentium III with PC800 memory and PC133. Although Pentium 4 has a much faster bus (quad pumped 100 MHz versus 133 MHz) this turned out to be surprisingly accurate for some of the software. We label the projection with tecChannel.de 1500 PC133 and an orange bar.
The sample of a Pentium 4 for Socket 478 has blue bars for acutal scores, and the Pentium 4 with PC800 in an 850 board comes up in green.
The hardware used for the benchmarks is listed in the sections Test Setup, available in the navigation bar to the right. We have to spare the details on the i845 and the Pentium 4 for Socket 478 there, for obvious reasons.
SYSmark2000
The level of performance with standard applications is still the most important issue for a microprocessor. This does not only include programs such as Microsoft's Word or Excel but also MPEG encoders, 3D- and sound-editing applications. Chip makers simply love computer games because this market always is in need of ever bigger CPU performance. Even the Internet has also been identified as one of the potential drivers for faster CPUs. However, practical experience has shown that neither SSE nor 3DNow! make much of a difference when it comes to surfing the Internet - although in particular Intel would not agree here, as even the architecture of the Pentium 4 was named "NetBurst".
Apart from a few exceptions, classic 2D applications gain the most from a CPU that performs well with integer instructions. But the number of sound and graphics editing applications that - as for example games do - prefer a fast FPU and MMX, SSE (2) or 3DNow! still is constantly increasing.
3DMark
We evaluate the 3D performance of a microprocessor using 3DMark2000 by MadOnion.com and the older version 3DMark99 Max Pro. The latter is not very well optimized for AMD's 3D instruction set and gives an insight in the efficiency of the 3D instructions itself. Both benchmarks also stress the whole system, including AGP and memory interface.
Expendable
Expendable is based on Direct3D. It features a complex set of lighting and textures. Especially high resolutions and color depths stress the system here. It has to be noted here, that this game already at launch states that it was highly optimzed for 3DNow!, which makes even a Duron at 950 MHz beat the Pentium 4 with SDRAM in this benchmark. However, Expendable shows how much a complete optimization for a given SIMD instruction set can achieve.
Quake III Arena
The retail version of Quake III Arena with the patch to version 1.17 is based on OpenGL. We run Demo1 at High Quality and Demo2 at the Normal setting. As with actual gaming, sound is turned on.
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament, Retail Version with Patch 420 applied, is especially demanding for the CPU and memory subsystem. We use Direct3D for being the most popular interface although the game is not very well optimized for today's graphics boards. Experience has shown that CPU is the most important issue for Unreal Tournament.
Unreal
We also use the older game "Unreal" with the Option Softrenderer. This makes the game render all the graphics per CPU and also stresses memory transfers. The graphics board is almost irrelevant here.
Cinema 4D
Cinema 4D XL by Maxon is a professional tool for 3D modeling and animation. The Benchmark "Cinebench 2000" was specially designed by Maxon themselves. The two modes "Shading" and "Raytracing" differ a lot. Especially when raytracing is used, a microprocessors FPU can shine as there are a lot of shadows, transparencies, reflections along with anti-alisasing to be calculated.
Conclusion
The parts reviewed here are pre-production samples. The actual performance of the final products may be a little better, but the direction is clear already: Pentium 4 looses around ten per cent of its performance at the same clock speed when working with PC133-SDRAM instead of PC800 RDRAM.
Brookdale, or i845, may be an option to recommend when its version for DDR-SDRAM finally arrives and the matching CPU hits clock speeds beyond 2 GHz. But according to Intels latest roadmaps, AMD has a full six months for a counter strike.
This situation may change immediately if Intel decides to ship Northwood with double the cache sizes of Willamette as the rumor mills say. Once more, it all depends on Intel being willing and able to deliver the right product at the right time and with the right volume. (mec/nie)
Test Setup: Software
Wir review microprocessors in a strictly controlled environment.
For software this means:
SYSmark2000 by BAPCo runs at 1024 x 768 pixels, 32 bits. We use Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 SP1.
V-Sync is turned off for all 3D- and Gaming-Tests.
Benchmarks 3DMark99 Max Pro and 3DMark2000 by MadOnion run at 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 with the programs default settings.
Quake III Arena V1.17 Retail Version uses Normal und High Quality per their default settings. Different resolutions are applied while testing. The corresponding setting can be taken from the charts.
For Unreal, Patch 2.26, we give the average frame rate after at least three complete runs. Software-Rendering is turned on by -nohard.
General settings can be read from the following table:
Game | Input | Switches |
|---|---|---|
| ||
Expendable Retail-Version | Setup | Use Low Resolution Movies: off; Use Vertical Sync.: off; Start by: go.exe - timedemo |
Quake III Arena V1.17 Retail-Version | command line | Console: timedemo 1; Start per Demo Menu: DEMO001 und DEMO002 |
Unreal Tournament Retail-Version Patch 420 | Menu andcommand line | TimeDemo Statistics: on; Options Preferences Video: Details: High; Min. Desired Framerate: 0; Input: demoplay utbench |
Unreal Retail-Version Patch 226 | command line | Console: timedemo 1 Score after three runs Software-Rendering: -nohard |
Test Setup: AMD-CPUs
Part | Data |
|---|---|
| |
Mainboard 1 | Asus A7V |
Serial No. | 08Z7121850 |
BIOS | 10005B |
Other | Socket A, VIA Apollo KT133 |
RAM 1 | MemorySolution BIGDIMM 128 MByte |
Serial No. | --- |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 128 MByte PC133-SDRAM 3-3-3 |
RAM 2 | MemorySolution BIGDIMM 128 MByte |
Serial No. | --- |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 128 MByte PC133-SDRAM 3-3-3 |
Graphics Card | Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS |
Serial No. | TGB0010020050812 |
Firmware | 2.15.03.01.07 |
Other | AGP, 32 MByte DDR-SDRAM, Detonator 6.31 |
SCSI Adapter | Adaptec AHA-2940UW Pro |
Serial No. | BC0B90905QN |
Firmware | v2.11.0 |
Other | Rev. C |
Hard Drive | Quantum ATLAS IV 9 WLS |
Serial No. | 369918630925 |
Firmware | 0808 |
Other | REV 01-D, 8,7 Gbyte |
DVD-ROM | Pioneer DVD-303S-A |
Serial No. | TGT0059424WL |
Firmware | 1.09 |
Other | --- |
Sound Card | TerraTec XLerate Pro |
Serial No. | 1293900011399 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | Rev. C / 4.06.2016 / 13.03.1999 |
NIC | Realtek RTL8139B 10/100 Ethernet |
Serial No. | 1562912232539 |
Firmware | -- |
Other | Rev: 1.2 |
Power Supply | Channel Well Technology ATX-230 |
Serial No. | 540299070594 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 230 W |
Floppy | TEAC FD-235HF |
Serial No. | B210033 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | --- |
Keyboard | Cherry RS 6000 M |
Serial No. | G 0064318 4 L28 3 I |
Firmware | --- |
Other | --- |
Mouse | Logitech M-S35 |
Serial No. | LZA84352013 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 3 Keys ;-) |
Test Setup: Intel-CPUs
Please note that we can not give details of the Pentium 4 for Socket 478 and the i845 motherboard here. We did, however, take the scores of this platform using the same add-on cards that were used for RDRAM platforms. The memory used was PC133-SDRAM with the fastest settings available.
Part | Data |
|---|---|
| |
Mainboard 1 | TyanTrinity 400 S1854SLA |
Serial No. | TY0972122061 |
BIOS | v1.07 |
Other | Rev. H, Slot 1 /S370 |
RAM 1 | MemorySolution BIGDIMM 128 MByte |
Serial No. | --- |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 128 MByte PC133-SDRAM 3-3-3 |
RAM 2 | MemorySolution BIGDIMM 128 MByte |
Serial No. | --- |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 128 MByte PC133-SDRAM 3-3-3 |
Graphics Card | Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS |
Serial No. | TGB0010020050818 |
Firmware | 2.15.03.01.07 |
Other | AGP, 32 MByte DDR-SDRAM, Detonator 6.31 |
SCSI Adapter | Adaptec AHA-2940UW Pro |
Serial No. | BC0B90904KF |
Firmware | v2.11.0 |
Other | Rev. C |
Hard Drive | Quantum ATLAS IV 9 WLS |
Serial No. | 369924434631 |
Firmware | 0909 |
Other | REV 01-E, 8,7 GByte |
DVD-ROM | Pioneer DVD-303S-A |
Serial No. | TGT0059423WL |
Firmware | 1.09 |
Other | --- |
Sound Card | TerraTec XLerate Pro |
Serial No. | 1293900011590 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | Rev. C / 4.06.2016 / 13.03.1999 |
NIC | Realtek RTL8139B 10/100 Ethernet |
Serial No. | 1562912232546 |
Firmware | -- |
Other | Rev: 1.2 |
Power Supply | Channel Well Technology ATX-230 |
Serial No. | 540299070594 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 230 W |
Flopppy | TEAC FD-235HF |
Serial No. | E081321 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | --- |
Keyboard | Cherry RS 6000 M |
Serial No. | G 0064322 4 L28 3 I |
Firmware | --- |
Other | --- |
Mouse | Logitech M-S35 |
Serial No. | LZA84352020 |
Firmware | --- |
Other | 3 Keys ;-) |