X-bit labs

Intel Celeron D CPU: Budget Processors from Intel Acquire Prescott Core (page 13)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 06/25/2004 | 06:15 AM ]

Data Compression, Video and Audio Encoding

During the work of WinRAR archiving utility the enhanced data prefetch algorithm of the Prescott core appears very important. Moreover, larger L2 cache has also contributed to the pretty high performance of the new Celeron D processors. However, the available cache memory is still too small for the new CPUs to feel the real master of the situation. As a result, Pentium 4 processors look much better in WinRAR than Celeron D.

When we compress audio files in mp3 format, the size of the cache memory and the RAM performance hardly tell on the overall results at all. That is why such a high result of the Celeron D processor at its super high 3.8GHz clock frequency shouldn’t surprise you. When working at the nominal frequency, the new Celeron D manages to outperform the slower Pentium 4 models, but is still unable to compete with Athlon XP.

By the way, one more peculiarity of this test is the fact that the previous generation Celeron (Northwood) processors run faster than Celeron D on the Prescott core. So, it illustrates perfectly well that faster bus and larger cache memory is not a universal panacea against all problems caused by a longer pipeline of the 90nm core.

And during raw-video encoding into MPEG2 format, Celeron D proved highly efficient due to the SSE3 instructions support, as these particular instructions are actively used y the Mainconcept codec.

Celeron D processors also coped pretty well with the video encoding into MPEG4 format. In particular, Celeron D 335 working at its nominal frequency outperformed any Pentium 4 2.4GHz as well as Athlon XP 2800+. The overclocked Celeron D 330 working at 3.8GHz appeared even faster than Pentium 4 3.2E on Prescott core.