A few weeks ago we reviewed the Athlon XP (review here), a CPU that was put out to make it harder for the Pentium 4 to maintain its apparent performance lead (MHz to MHz). The new naming scheme (Athlon "XP") and "tpi" (true performance index) is directly targeted at the Pentium 4, so an Athlon XP 1800+ is supposed to be similar or better than a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, although only clocked at 1.53 GHz in reality.
To give a good indication on how well the Pentium 4 performs, we have included benchmarks of the following CPUs: Pentium 4 2 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 1.5 GHz (i850 platform), Athlon XP 1800+ and Athlon Thunderbird 1.33 GHz (AMD760 and KT266A platforms) and finally the Intel Pentium III 1 GHz (440BX platform). Especially the 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 vs the Athlon XP 1800+ should prove to be an interesting fight!
The Intel Pentium 4 2 GHz The Intel Pentium 4 line of processors was first introduced November 20th 2000 in speeds of 1.4 and 1.5 GHz. On August 27th 2001, a little over 9 months after its release, Intel broke the 2 GHz barrier with the Pentium 4 - a CPU that does 2 billion clock cycles per second! That is the CPU we have in front of us today.
Intel Intel started out in 1968, and in 1971 they introduced the world's first microprocessor. Intel is still best known for their processors, but they have expanded and supplies chips, boards, systems, software, networking and communications equipment and lots more.
Moore's Law As you may have discovered, CPU’s get faster and faster every year. In 1965 a clever kid called Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors per integrated circuit would double every 18 months. He said that this trend would continue through 1975. The fact is, that this trend holds true even in our day. The Pentium 4 consists of nothing less than 42 million transistors.
Specifications
The Intel® Pentium® 4 processor is available at speeds ranging from 1.30 to 2 GHz.
The Intel® Pentium® 4 processor is available in the PGA-423 and mPGA-478 form factors.
Featuring the new Intel® NetBurst™ micro-architecture.
Supported by the Intel® 850 chipset, Intel ® 845 chipset.
Fully compatible with existing Intel® Architecture-based software.
Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions.
Intel® MMX™ media enhancement technology.
Memory cacheability up to 4 GB of addressable memory space and system memory scalability up to 64 GB of physical memory.
Support for uni-processor designs.
Based upon Intel's 0.18 micron manufacturing process.
