The current May promises to become one more important milestone in the life of Intel Pentium 4 processors and NetBurst architecture in general. In May Intel is supposed to launch 4 principally new products. These are:

• Pentium 4 processors with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus;
• i850E chipset supporting PC1066 RDRAM;
• i845E and i845G featuring DDR333 support;
• Celeron CPUs based on Pentium 4 architecture.

Today on May 6, Intel officially announced two first novelties: 2 Pentium 4 processors working at 2.26GHz and 2.4GHz supporting 533MHz bus and i850E chipset designed specifically for them. Of course, we can't help paying special attention to this event and devote our new review to it. Especially, since the launching of new Intel CPUs means the beginning of another round of "Intel vs. AMD" discussions.

The launching of the new Intel processors inspired us to update our benchmarks set (now there are 35 benchmarks in it), so that to make it "more professional". Now we will check the abilities of the high-performance CPUs in such a popular CAD-application as AutoCAD 2002 and in several well-known rendering applications, such as 3ds max 4.26, Maya 4.0.1 and Lightwave 7.08b. We can't also leave out the fact that our testlab has moved to SYSmark 2002 using a more up-to-date set of applications to measure the system performance. But, let us start from the very beginning.

Closer Look: New Pentium 4 Processors

These CPUs are already well-known to all of us: they are based on the same 0.13micron Northwood core, as the already produced mass Pentium 4 processors. The feature distinguishing the new CPUs from the predecessors is the official support of 533MHz bus, which means the following:

• New CPUs intended for 533MHz Quad Pumped bus do work stably at 133MHz FSB frequency.
• These CPUs boast new clock frequency multiplier, which allows them to work stably with 133MHz FSB.

And now a bit more details. Intel announced two new processors working at 2.26GHz and 2.4GHz working with the FSB frequency of 133MHz. These two models enlarge the already existing Pentium 4 processor family intended to work with 100MHz FSB and already including two models with these working frequencies: 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz. In order to distinguish between the CPUs supporting 400MHz bus and 533MHz bus, the new CPUs working at 2.4Ghz and supporting 533MHz bus will be marked as Intel Pentium 4 2.4B GHz. As there shouldn't be any difficulty in distinguishing between Pentium 4 2.2GHz and 2.26GHz, there will be no "B" suffix used in this case.

Just like the predecessors, Pentium 4 2.26GHz and 2.4B GHz will have locked clock frequency multipliers equal to 17x and 18x respectively. In other words, you will be unable to use Pentium 4 CPUs designed to support 133MHz FSB in a system with 100MHz FSB.

In fact, we could have finished our story about the new Pentium 4 processors here, as they boast no architectural differences compared with the predecessors. So, if you are looking for more details on the Northwood core, please, consult our article called "Intel Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2.0AGHz and 2.2GHz against AMD Athlon XP 2000+". However, one very important fact should never be missed out. Starting from the end of April, Intel began mass production of CPUs from new 300mm wafers instead of the older 200mm wafers. It implies that new processor cores manufactured from 300mm wafers boast lower production cost. But this is not everything yet. To move the production lines to more progressive technology Intel engineers had to slightly change the Northwood core design, so that its size got 10% smaller. These "progressive" cores are expected to be used mostly in the new Pentium 4 processors supporting 533MHz bus. They can be easily distinguished by the new C0 core stepping. The practical effect made by the new core design is also very important: the CPUs using the new core stepping boast higher clock frequency potential. Intel expects the new cores to work stably at the frequencies up to 3GHz. As a result, the CPUs based on the new core stepping but working at lower frequencies will boast much higher overclockability than their predecessors. However, we will be able to see what the whole thing is worth in reality only when the new Pentium 4 processors based on C0 core stepping start selling in mass. Though, frankly speaking, there is not so much waiting left already.

If we try to say a few words about Intel's further plans concerning the launching of new Pentium 4 models, then you should know that in Q3 the company is planning to release processors working at 2.53GHz and 2.66GHz supporting 533Mhz bus and 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz supporting 400MHz bus. In Q4 we will see Pentium 4 2.8GHz for 533MHz bus. As for the similar solution supporting slower 400MHz bus, Intel has no plans to release any. Later on all new Pentium 4 models will support only 533MHz bus. And the beginning of 2003 will be marked by the conquering of the 3GHz bar: Intel scheduled its new 3.06GHz Pentium 4 processor for Q1 2003.

This way, Intel is going to move to a new faster 533MHz bus quite rapidly. The table below illustrates this fact even better:

Intel is planning to continue increasing the bus frequency for its Pentium 4 CPUs. New Pentium 4 processors on the 0.09micron Prescott core, which are due some time in H2 2003, are expected to support even faster 667MHz Quad Pumped Bus. So, the today's 533MHz are far from being the top.

Closer Look: i850E Chipset for New Pentium 4 CPUs

Of course, the launching of new processors supporting faster 533Mhz Quad Pumped Bus required new chipsets supporting this bus. We are already familiar with one chipset like that: SiS645DX (see our SiS645DX Chipset Review: ASUS P4S533 and DDR400). However, Intel was also expected to announce some solutions for the new processor bus. By the due time of the new CPUs, Intel prepared i850E RDRAM chipset, i845E DDR chipset and i845G chipset with the integrated graphics core. i845E and i845G will be announced a bit later this month, and together with the new Pentium 4 2.26GHz and 2.4B GHz processors Intel announced officially i850E, which we are going to pay a bit more attention to now.

Although honestly, there is not so much detail worth mentioning. The new i850E chipset is just the same as the 1.5 years old i850 with only one new feature introduced: official support of faster 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus (133MHz FSB). Although in practice, even the older i850 version allowed using 133MHz FSB (PCI and AGP bus frequencies remained nominal in this case: 33Mhz and 66MHz respectively). So, the whole thing resulted into a modification of the mainboard reference design aimed at increasing the board's stability when working with 133MHz FSB and into the development of the new chipset North Bridge.

This way, the major i850E features can be described as follows:

• Support of Pentium 4 CPUs with 400MHz or 533MHz bus;
• Support of dual-channel PC800 RDRAM (up to 2GB, ECC modules support possible);
• AGP 4x graphics port;
• ICH2 South Bridge connected to the MCH via Hub Link 1.0 with 266MB/sec bandwidth;
• ATA/100, USB 1.1 and AC'97 sound support.

Here we would like to comment on two things. Firstly, i850E supports officially only PC800 RDRAM and doesn't support PC1066 RDRAM. However, the use of dual-channel PC1066 RDRAM seems to be more logical in case of 533MHz bus, because this memory works synchronously with FSB and features the same bandwidth as the 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus: 4.2GB/sec. So, no wonder that i850E does support PC1066 though Intel never mentions it openly. Why? Well, this is all very simple: as Intel decided to terminate the cooperation with Rambus, they made up their mind not to carry out all the necessary stability tests for the new RDRAM memory type and hence didn't include it into the specifications. However, Intel doesn't deny the fact that the mainboard makers can perform all the stability tests themselves and then have every reason to claim the PC1066 RDRAM support by their i850E based products.

Secondly, Intel cannot use in i850E the new ICH4 South Bridge supporting 6 USB 2.0 ports even though it is already ready. ICH4 will be connected with the chipset North Bridge via Hub Link version 1.1, which is not supported in i850E. In other words, Intel appeared too lazy to introduce this change into the new i850E expecting it to stay in the market for a pretty short period of time. This way, we will see ICH4 a bit later, in the upcoming i845G and i845E, and i850E will be provided with the "ancient" ICH2.

We should also point out that because of the mentioned above reasons, only few mainboard manufacturers will use i850E for their solutions. And the mass spreading of mainboards for 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus will start only after the launching of i845E and i845G. As we know so far, i850E based mainboards will be introduced only by Intel of course, ASUS, Gigabyte, QDI and maybe also MSI. By the way, ASUS is going to implement one more very interesting feature on its i850E based P4T533 mainboard: the support of 32bit RDRAM memory modules. In fact, 32bit memory modules are none other but a pair of regular 16bit memory modules combined in a single package. This way, you no longer need to use Rambus memory modules in pairs. As there are two 16bit channels implemented in a single 32bit module. Memory modules of the kind, from Kingston, for instance, have already started shipping.

And What about AMD?

Of course, many of you expected AMD to strike back after the launching of Pentium 4 processors with 533MHz bus. However, as we see, no response from AMD has followed yet. The fastest AMD Athlon XP processor is still 2100+ model based on 0.18micron Palomino core, which should now be able to compete with the new Pentium 4 2.4B GHz.

This situation will last until the beginning of June when AMD should finally launch its first desktop CPU based on a new 0.13micron Thoroughbred core. However, there is hardly much we could expect from it: the architecture of this processor will be just the same as that of the predecessors, and its performance rating will be equal only to 2200+.

However, AMD does admit that they are falling behind Intel now from the technological point of view. However, AMD hopes that the upcoming launching of ClawHammer processors in the end of the year will be able to change the situation in the desktop CPU market. The new ClawHammer CPU due in Q4 2002 is expected to feature 3400+ rating, while the working frequencies of Pentium 4 processors will reach the maximum of 2.8GHz by that time. Besides, AMD is also planning to launch Athlon XP processor with larger 512KB L2 cache, which should help the company to compete with Intel Pentium 4 until the new ClawHammer is out.

The currently fastest Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP CPUs boast the following specifications:

Testbed and Methods

We tried to figure out how greatly the performance will increase once we use faster 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus and PC1066 RDRAM in our Pentium 4 system. At the same time, we compared the performance of the today's fastest Pentium 4 and Athlon XP processors. The CPUs worked in systems built on the today's fastest chipsets: Pentium 4 worked in a board based on i850E, and Athlon XP - in a board on VIA KT333. Also we started using faster graphics accelerator built on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 and raised the capacity of the supported system memory up to 512MB. As a result, we assembled the following testbeds:

All the benchmarks were run in MS Windows XP Professional.

As we are now using much more new benchmarks, we considered it logical to split them all into groups depending on the tasks type.

Performance

Synthetic Benchmarks of the Memory Subsystem

Since we tested the systems with different peak bandwidths of the memory and processor bus, we would like to take a look first of all at the results obtained in synthetic benchmarks measuring memory subsystem bandwidth and latency.

As we see, faster processor bus in a Pentium 4 system doesn't bring in any noticeable performance gain. However, as soon as we increase the memory bandwidth together with the processor bus bandwidth, both: reads and writes or data copying get performed much faster.

The results of our latency measurements are also very easy to explain. Increasing the FSB frequency up to 133MHz by Pentium 4 leads to a pretty natural latency reduction, caused by the smaller clock frequency multiplier "from the CPU's viewpoint". Also the use of PC1066 allows reducing the memory latency, although even in this case the results shown by a Pentium 4 platform are far behind those shown by Athlon XP working with DDR333, which is pretty logical as the clock multiplier of Athlon XP processor is much smaller.

If we disengage ourselves from the "processor's" latency and divide the numbers obtained by the corresponding clock frequency multipliers, we will get 17 for Athlon XP 2100+, 19 for Pentium 4 2.4B GHz with PC1066, 20.5 for Pentium 4 2.4B GHz with PC800 and 17 for Pentium 4 2.4GHz with PC800. In other words, the memory subsystem built with dual-channel PC800 RDRAM features the same latency as DDR333, PC800 RDRAM working asynchronously with 533MHz bus boasts a bit worse latency and the latency of PC1066 RDRAM is higher than that of PC800 RDRAM but at the same time better than the latency of the asynchronously working PC800 RDRAM.

SiSoft Sandra sums up everything mentioned above. The practical peak bandwidth by Pentium 4 2.4B GHz with PC800 RDRAM is 11% higher than that of Pentium 4 2.4GHz with PC800 RDRAM. And the use of faster PC1066 RDRAM allows improving this result by another 19%.

Speaking about the utilization of the theoretical memory bandwidth, we should mention that the Pentium 4 systems with PC800 RDRAM use only 78% of it, and the increase in the processor us frequency allows improving this parameter up to 87%. Besides, the bandwidth of PC1066 RDRAM in Pentium 4 systems with 533MHz bus is used by the same 78%, which signals that increasing the processor bus speed of Pentium 4 CPUs does make sense. By the way, in Athlon XP systems with DDR333 only 76% of the memory bandwidth may be used, however, you should keep in mind that in systems with DDR266 this rate exceeded 90%.

Office Applications and Data Encoding

This is the first review where we used a new SYSmark2002 testing set from BAPCo. It inherited many of its features from the predecessor, SYSmark 2001. In particular, it also consists of the same two parts: Internet Content Creation measuring the performance in applications such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and Office Productivity including common applications such as WinZIP, Word, Excel, antivirus, etc. Nevertheless, SYSmark 2002 also has undergone some significant changes. First of all, the test includes new versions of all applications. Second, they changed the sum total algorithm so that it appears more dependent on the system performance in all applications included into the benchmarks set.

We would also like to point out that SYSmark 2002 turned more sensitive to the memory subsystem performance. The intensity of operations with the memory subsystems has nearly doubled in the new SYSmark 2002 compared with the previous test version.

Let's have a look at the results obtained:

As we see, Pentium 4 processors keep the leadership here. This time the result can't be explained by the use of older Windows Media Encoder, because the new version of this application included into the SYSmark 2002 benchmark set recognizes SSE instructions of Athlon XP CPU.

Nevertheless, Pentium 4 manages to outperform Athlon XP best of all in the Internet Content Creation part of the test. it can be partially explained by the fact that the newer version of such popular applications as Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 or Adobe Premiere 6.0 started using SSE2 instructions of the Pentium 4 processor.

Summing up the results of SYSmark 2002, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the migration of Pentium 4 processors to faster 533MHz bus ensures a much greater effect in typical applications than the use of PC1066 RDRAM. This is another argument in favour of 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus in i845E and i845G based systems working with DDR266 and DDR333.

The encoding of wav-files into mp3 format doesn't depend a lot on the memory and processor bus speed. Let's see if the same thing is true for video encoding.

In this case, the speeding up of the Pentium 4 processor bus doesn't have any visible effect on the performance, however, the increase in the bandwidth of the channel between the CPU and the memory up to 4.2GB/sec ensures a pretty tangible improvement. The MPEG-4 encoding speed grows by 11%.

The data compression with RAR algorithm appears even more dependent on the processor bus and memory bus bandwidths. All in all, only speeding up the key buses in the system without increasing the Pentium 4 clock frequency allows gaining over 13% of performance.

3D Games

At first let us see what results were obtained in a semi-synthetic 3Dmark2001 SE.

Athlon XP processors are traditionally strong in 3Dmark. Nevertheless, Athlon XP 2100+ can't compete with Pentium 4 2.4GHz, which turned out much faster as it got new 533MHz bus.

The tests in 3Dmark2001 SE with the disabled hardware T&L is of great importance to us, as in this case all geometry and lighting calculations are performed by the CPU. At the same time, the systems involves SIMD-instructions very actively. This is one of the reasons why Pentium 4 family supporting more advanced SSE2 instructions outperforms its rivals from AMD.

As we have already demonstrated in the previous test session, the performance in Quake3 Arena depends a lot on the bandwidth of the processor-to-memory channel. The current tests prove this observation once again. Pentium 4 2.4B GHz outpaces Pentium 4 2.4GHz by 5% even when we use the same PC800 RDRAM for both. And the increase in the memory bandwidth from 3.2GB/sec up to 4.2GB/sec allows getting another 7% of performance.

Return to Castle Wolfstein game is built on the same gaming engine as Quake3. Therefore, the results obtained here are very similar to the previous case.

The resolution increase and higher image quality force the graphics subsystem to take over a part of the calculations. This is one of the reasons why the results are more or less equal. Moreover, Athlon XP doesn't look so hopeless any more as in case of lower resolutions.

In Serious Sam the leadership goes over to Athlon XP. Only PC1066 RDRAM helps Pentium 4 2.4B GHz to defeat Athlon XP 2100+ working at a much lower frequency, by the way: 1.73GHz.

However, as the resolution grows up to 1280x1024 Pentium 4 appears absolutely helpless.

In the recently release popular helicopter flight simulator, which we decided to use for our tests, the fps rate appears dependent a lot on the processor and memory bus bandwidths. If we interpolate the results, we will be able to suppose that Pentium 4 2.4B GHz with PC800 RDRAM works almost as fast as Pentium 4 2.6GHz with 400MHz bus, and the use of PC1066 RDRAM with Pentium 4 2.4B GHz increases its performance up to that of the hypothetical Pentium 4 2.8GHz.

When we set higher resolution, it appears absolutely useless to further increase the processor bus speed without the symmetric increase in the memory bandwidth.

3D Rendering

We tested the 3D rendering speed in three popular applications: 3ds max 4.26, Maya 4.0.1 and Lightwave 7.0b. In all the tests we timed the scenes rendering speed that is why smaller values on the diagrams correspond to better performance. To test in 3ds max we selected islands scene, for Maya 4.0.1we used Maya-Testcenter rendertest methodology and in Lightwave we used sunset scene.

As we remember, Athlon XP processors have always been pretty successful in final rendering tests. However, not so long ago they released a new update to this test package, which allowed making good use of SSE2 instructions. The results are evident, just have a look at the diagram: Pentium 4 processors started rendering at a really high speed. As for the effect made by the faster buses in Pentium 4 based systems, it is not that high. Rendering is a purely computational process, which needs no intensive data transfer between the CPU and the memory.

The similar situation takes place in Maya. However, here Athlon XP 2100+ appears close to Pentium 4 2.4GHz.

In Lightwave Athlon XP 2100+ processor wins the first prize. Note that faster buses in Pentium 4 system have absolutely no effect on the test results.

Summing up the results of this section we would like to point out once again that Athlon XP CPU boasts much better computational capacities. This is what makes it look so cool in rendering applications. If the application doesn't require rapid data transfer along the processor-to-memory channel, then the advantages of Pentium 4 architecture appear undemanded.

Scientific and Professional OpenGL Applications

Of course, Athlon XP processors show their best when working in tasks dealing with math1ematical modeling. The FPU performance matters a lot in applications of the kind, which is Athlon's indisputable high. The-pipeline FPU of these processors lets them outperform Pentium 4 working at much higher core clock frequency. At the same time, the increase in the processor bus frequency doesn't help Pentium4 to improve the situation.

In SPECviewperf tests the performance advantage stays in turns with AMD processors and Pentium 4 processors. Everything depends on the particular task: if it is critical to the processor-to-memory channel bandwidth or to the CPU computational capacities.

When we ran the tests in 3ds max wireframe viewports, Pentium 4 based systems won the laurels. The increase in the Quad Pumped Bus frequency also allowed to speed up the processor performance in 3ds max. in general, the situation is very similar to what we have just seen in AutoCAD.

When we shift to smooth and highlights mode, the computational resources of the processor get higher workload. The results are very clearly shown on the diagram.

Conclusion

Having launched several new Pentium 4 models within a very short period of time, and having moved this processor family to faster 533MHz bus, Intel managed to reach a certain advantage of its fastest processors over the competitors from AMD. Although this statement makes sense only for those tasks where no powerful computational resources are needed, as Athlon XP stays the leader there. Nevertheless, AMD has to do something as soon as possible to retain the high-performance CPU market, otherwise…

As for the moving to faster 533MHz processor bus, NetBurst architecture turned out capable of standing changes like that. The performance growth in this case is great enough and sometimes reaches 15%, if there is a memory subsystem with the corresponding bandwidth to match. In case the memory subsystem bandwidth is lower than that of the processor, the performance gain will not be that high. However, this will be the topic of our next discussion devoted to DDR SDRAM solutions for Pentium 4 processors with 533MHz bus.

Since Intel refused to continue supporting Rambus, i850E will hardly become very widely spread, even though it might be the performance leader among all other Pentium 4 solutions. And it is a great pity, actually. That is why we suppose that the performance advantage provided by faster processor bus promises to be not that high in real Pentium 4 systems produced in mass quantities and working with DDR SDRAM. However, Intel intends to improve the situation by the end of the year when the company releases dual-channel DDR SDRAM chipset for its Pentium 4 CPUs.