X-bit labs

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Dual-Core CPU Review (page 6)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 05/17/2005 | 09:19 PM ]

To ensure proper cooling of the new Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, Intel offers a new solution with larger cooling surface and a larger copper sole. The picture below shows the old boxed cooler for top LGA 775 CPUs (left) and the new cooler for dual-core processors (right):

Throughout our tests the temperature of the processor working with the above mentioned new cooling solution under maximum workload didn’t exceed 70^oC.

Testbed and Methods

During this test session we compared the performance of the dual-core Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor with against that of the tope single-core processors as well as against the top dual-core CPU from AMD. So, Pentium Extreme Edition 840 will be competing today with Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.

For our tests we assembled a few systems. Here is a list of the hardware we used:

• CPU:
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 2 x 1024KB L2, E6 core revision aka Toledo);
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (Socket 939, 2.6GHz, 1024KB L2, CG core revision aka ClawHammer);
  • AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 1024KB L2, CG core revision aka ClawHammer);
  • AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 512KB L2, E3 core revision aka Venice);
  • Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 2 x 1MB L2);
  • Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz (LGA775, 3.73GHz, 2MB L2);
  • Intel Pentium 4 660 (LGA775, 3.6GHz, 2MB L2);
  • Intel Pentium 4 570 (LGA775, 3.8GHz, 1MB L2);
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe (Socket 939, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI);
  • ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe (LGA775, nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition)).
• Memory:
  • 1024MB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO, 2 x 512MB, 2-2-2-10);
  • 1024MB DDR2-667 SDRAM (Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL, 2 x 512MB, 4-4-4-14).
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (PCI-E x16) graphics card.
• Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150) HDD.
• Microsoft Windows XP SP2 OS.