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Written by Tuan "Solace" Nguyen
Thursday, June 21, 2001
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Page 4 of 4 3DMark2000 CPU Marks
While it doesn’t show anything spectacular, it does show the performance trend and shows what we can expect from the next release of the Pentium 4 in general. If the only new element in the next announcement is MHz increments, we’ll be seeing about 8 to 14% in most cases.
3DMark2000
3DMark generally does quite well on Intel silicon and we see it doing well here. At these speeds, the results seem to be being held back from the graphics card that’s in use. With a GeForce3 we’ll see even more performance increases. Now some of you reading might grudge at the fact that I said “GeForce3” but the fact remains that people are buying GeForce3 video cards like mad.
Quake 3 Arena with 1.25y Point Release
Everyone knows that the Pentium 4 is one mean Quake CPU and frankly, it’s not just Quake that it’s good at. It seems to be good at all Id games. Expect to see Doom 3 blaze on the Pentium 4 thanks to heavy SSE/SSE2 optimizations.
Normal mode really flies along using a GeForce2 Ultra. 98.5FPS at 1600x1200 anyone? I thought so.
High Quality shows the same gains with overclocking. It looks like the Pentium 4 really shines when overclocked and used with games. The numbers above speak for themselves. Analysis and Conclusion
The Pentium 4 is a processor that’s difficult to understand for a lot of people out there. One must take a look at the core technology behind the Pentium 4 and realize that Intel is driving forth new architectures and new platforms. In the past when Intel introduce the 80386 processor, 32bit computing was unheard of and was generally hype more than anything. But look at where we are today. We’re beginning to saturate 32bit processing and slowly beginning to establish a smooth transition to 64bit processing. Though we won’t be seeing 64bit processors in our local computer stores in the near future, it really reflects what Intel has in mind when it designed the Pentium 4.
Optimizations and ground-up code are the two most important things that will unleash the power that’s still relatively dormant inside the Pentium 4. Sometimes it’s unfortunate to be road pavers but one day, many will ride the highway.
If you run 32bit code on Intel’s 64bit Itanium, it won’t run as well on the Itanium and would run better on a Pentium 3. Because of this, AMD is taking a different route with its Hammer architecture and effectively slamming two processors into one core. One side will handle 32bit code natively while the other 64bit. Either way, the move to a newer, more efficient, more powerful architecture is inevitable.
Each of the Pentium 4’s released on the market overclock very well. The 1.7GHz will give you the highest performance and considering that Intel has slashed prices in record amounts recently, Pentium 4 systems are much more attractive than they use to be.
Overclocking the FSB really increased performance because it also increases the speed of other systems like PCI and AGP speeds. These increases along with the actual core speed increase equate to a larger performance increase than you would receive if you purchase a faster processor constantly. I noticed speeds reaching upwards of 18% in some cases -- especially in games. Regular business application users will see a slight improvement but for those of you that fall into this category, overclocking isn’t needed and I would rather stick with stability for productivity situations.
All in all, the Pentium 4 has a lot of good things going for it if Intel can just push out higher clock speeds. It looks like there are some wrinkles that need to be ironed out but they surely will in due time. When next-gen games come out, the Pentium 4 will be ready with all pipelines locked, and loaded.
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