The Latest Processors:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, Intel Pentium D 820,
Pentium 4 670

It took relatively long to prepare this material, as new processors kept being added to it in the process. We initially planned it as a review of the Pentium 4 670, but then we got hold of the Pentium D 820, and recently of a new single core flagship from AMD: Athlon 64 FX-57. However, despite the significant differences in positioning and performance, we still tried to bring tests of all the above mentioned processors together into a single article. Hopefully, it will have no effect on its content quality regarding each CPU. At first we are going to say a few words about each of the latest models.

Pentium 4 670

It's a logical successor to the Pentium 4 6xx series, one of its closest representatives is the previously reviewed Pentium 4 660. Thus, there is nothing special about it: the same core architecture (Prescott-2M) as in the Pentium 4 660, the same bus clock (800MHz in terms of bandwidth) and the L2 Cache size (2MB), but its clock has grown by another 200 MHz (i.e. up to 3.8 GHz). Judging from the latest (available in Internet) Intel's plans, the Pentium 4 670 must be the last processor in this line, as the 4GHz CPU based on Prescott-2M disappeared from the roadmap of this company last year. However, as Stephen King put it, "sometimes they come back"...

Pentium D 820

It's the lowest CPU in the series of multi-core desktop "non-extreme" processors from Intel. The key difference between the Pentium D and the Pentium XE, as we have already written, is that unlike the latter, Pentium D has two physical cores, but it doesn't support Hyper-Threading. Besides, the Pentium D 820 operates at the lowest clock among the entire series of Prescott-like CPUs: 2.8 GHz. There is nothing new in other respects: it's just a Pentium XE, but without Hyper-Threading. The main peculiarity of the Pentium D series is more than democratic prices (especially considering dual cores): according to the official data from the manufacturer, wholesale prices for Pentium D 820/830/840 currently amount to $241/316/530. For comparison: the wholesale price for the Pentium 4 670 is $851, Athlon 64 FX-57 — $1031. So, Pentium D 820 can quite set up for the title of a "people's dual core processor" (for quite well-off people, though).

Athlon 64 FX-57

The renowned successor to Athlon 64 FX-55 acquired a new 90nm San Diego core (its differences from Venice are minimal) with an improved memory controller and SSE3 support. Besides, the clock has grown by another 200 MHz to reach 2.8 GHz. It's the first Athlon 64 FX manufactured by the 90nm process technology supporting SSE3. It's an indirect sign that this process technology is streamlined to manufacture flagship processors offering the highest performance. From the users' point of view, the new Athlon 64 FX is no different from the previous model: it is installed into the same CPU socket as the previous Athlon 64 FX-55 and makes no additional requirements to a motherboard.

Testing

Testbed configurations

• Processors
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (1 MB L2, 2.8 GHz core)
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (1 MB L2, 2.6 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium eXtreme Edition 840 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 3.2 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium D 820 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 2.8 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 670 (2 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.8 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 eXtreme Edition 3.73 GHz (2 MB L2, 1066 MHz FSB)
  • Intel Pentium 4 540J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.2 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 520J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2.8 GHz core)
• Motherboards
• Intel D955XBK Desktop Board (Intel 955X)
• EPoX EP-9PNA+ Ultra (NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra)
• Memory
  • 2x512 MB PC5400 (DDR2-533) DIMM 3-3-3-8 (Corsair)
  • 2x512 MB PC3200 (DDR-400) DIMM 2-2-2-5 (Corsair)
• Video card: ATI Radeon X800 (256 MB)
• HDD: Samsung SP1614C (SATA), 7200 rpm, 8 MB Cache
• AC power adapter: FSP 550-60PLN (500-550W)
• Windows XP Professional SP2, DirectX 9.0c
• ATI CATALYST 5.4 (Display Driver 6.14.10.6525)

We selected processors for this article (in a seemingly strange way at first sight) based on the transparent (simply biblical) principle "two of every sort": it's quite logical to compare the Athlon 64 FX-57 with the Athlon 64 FX-55, the "low end dual core" Pentium D 820 with the top dual core processor from the same manufacturer - Pentium XE 840. Every pair of dual core processors was supplemented with a single core processor of a similar architecture and clock (Pentium 4 540/520). And Pentium 4 XE 3.73 GHz was a good match to the top desktop Pentium 4 670, due to the minimum clock differences. That's why this hodgepodge is quite systematic and meets the main comparison challenges, even though it looks a tad heterogeneous at first sight.

The Latest Processors:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, Intel Pentium D 820,
Pentium 4 670

It took relatively long to prepare this material, as new processors kept being added to it in the process. We initially planned it as a review of the Pentium 4 670, but then we got hold of the Pentium D 820, and recently of a new single core flagship from AMD: Athlon 64 FX-57. However, despite the significant differences in positioning and performance, we still tried to bring tests of all the above mentioned processors together into a single article. Hopefully, it will have no effect on its content quality regarding each CPU. At first we are going to say a few words about each of the latest models.

Pentium 4 670

It's a logical successor to the Pentium 4 6xx series, one of its closest representatives is the previously reviewed Pentium 4 660. Thus, there is nothing special about it: the same core architecture (Prescott-2M) as in the Pentium 4 660, the same bus clock (800MHz in terms of bandwidth) and the L2 Cache size (2MB), but its clock has grown by another 200 MHz (i.e. up to 3.8 GHz). Judging from the latest (available in Internet) Intel's plans, the Pentium 4 670 must be the last processor in this line, as the 4GHz CPU based on Prescott-2M disappeared from the roadmap of this company last year. However, as Stephen King put it, "sometimes they come back"...

Pentium D 820

It's the lowest CPU in the series of multi-core desktop "non-extreme" processors from Intel. The key difference between the Pentium D and the Pentium XE, as we have already written, is that unlike the latter, Pentium D has two physical cores, but it doesn't support Hyper-Threading. Besides, the Pentium D 820 operates at the lowest clock among the entire series of Prescott-like CPUs: 2.8 GHz. There is nothing new in other respects: it's just a Pentium XE, but without Hyper-Threading. The main peculiarity of the Pentium D series is more than democratic prices (especially considering dual cores): according to the official data from the manufacturer, wholesale prices for Pentium D 820/830/840 currently amount to $241/316/530. For comparison: the wholesale price for the Pentium 4 670 is $851, Athlon 64 FX-57 — $1031. So, Pentium D 820 can quite set up for the title of a "people's dual core processor" (for quite well-off people, though).

Athlon 64 FX-57

The renowned successor to Athlon 64 FX-55 acquired a new 90nm San Diego core (its differences from Venice are minimal) with an improved memory controller and SSE3 support. Besides, the clock has grown by another 200 MHz to reach 2.8 GHz. It's the first Athlon 64 FX manufactured by the 90nm process technology supporting SSE3. It's an indirect sign that this process technology is streamlined to manufacture flagship processors offering the highest performance. From the users' point of view, the new Athlon 64 FX is no different from the previous model: it is installed into the same CPU socket as the previous Athlon 64 FX-55 and makes no additional requirements to a motherboard.

Testing

Testbed configurations

• Processors
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (1 MB L2, 2.8 GHz core)
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (1 MB L2, 2.6 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium eXtreme Edition 840 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 3.2 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium D 820 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 2.8 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 670 (2 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.8 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 eXtreme Edition 3.73 GHz (2 MB L2, 1066 MHz FSB)
  • Intel Pentium 4 540J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.2 GHz core)
  • Intel Pentium 4 520J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2.8 GHz core)
• Motherboards
• Intel D955XBK Desktop Board (Intel 955X)
• EPoX EP-9PNA+ Ultra (NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra)
• Memory
  • 2x512 MB PC5400 (DDR2-533) DIMM 3-3-3-8 (Corsair)
  • 2x512 MB PC3200 (DDR-400) DIMM 2-2-2-5 (Corsair)
• Video card: ATI Radeon X800 (256 MB)
• HDD: Samsung SP1614C (SATA), 7200 rpm, 8 MB Cache
• AC power adapter: FSP 550-60PLN (500-550W)
• Windows XP Professional SP2, DirectX 9.0c
• ATI CATALYST 5.4 (Display Driver 6.14.10.6525)

We selected processors for this article (in a seemingly strange way at first sight) based on the transparent (simply biblical) principle "two of every sort": it's quite logical to compare the Athlon 64 FX-57 with the Athlon 64 FX-55, the "low end dual core" Pentium D 820 with the top dual core processor from the same manufacturer - Pentium XE 840. Every pair of dual core processors was supplemented with a single core processor of a similar architecture and clock (Pentium 4 540/520). And Pentium 4 XE 3.73 GHz was a good match to the top desktop Pentium 4 670, due to the minimum clock differences. That's why this hodgepodge is quite systematic and meets the main comparison challenges, even though it looks a tad heterogeneous at first sight.

computer architecture

CS 212 ( Computer Architecture)

I have learned so many things in computer architecture subject. The lessons are more focus on hardware installation, I learned about computer designs, about new processors, about the speed, memory and some functions of computer hardwares. I learned also about pipelining, overclocking and some ways on how to make CPU faster today.