First Intel 6xx CPU

Discussion in 'News and Article Comments' started by Addis, Feb 22, 2005.

  1. Addis

    Addis The King

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    Intel 6xxs + Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz

    This week, Intel have released the first of their awaited 6xx CPUs. Also introduced is the new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz, right after their new Xeon core Irwindale released last week.

    A quick reminder the Intel 6xx series of CPUs will have an additional 2mb or L2 cache instead of the 1mb of the 5xx series. The problem is that consumer CPUs don't advertise as much of a performance increase as their server coutnerparts which will get more boost in performance from the extra cache. Also larger cache cannot be be accessed as quickly as smaller caches and will have 17% higher latencies.

    The P4 Extreme Edition @ 3.73GHz will not be based on the 130nm Northwood core like earlier EE chips. Instead it will shift down to 90nm and is basically a 6xx CPU. It still has a higher clockspeed and FSB at 3.74GHz and 1066MHz respectively.

    The 6xx was released in 4 s so far:
    • Pentium 4 660 @ 3.6GHz
    • Pentium 4 650 @ 3.4GHz
    • Pentium 4 640 @ 3.2GHz
    • Pentium 4 630 @ 3.0GHz
    All have 2mb of L2 cache and an 800MHz FSB. They will cost around an additional $50-$70 or so more than their 5xx equivelants. Also they have the new Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) and EM64T or EMT64 (Extended Memory 64 Technology). EM64T was on the Prescott core but was never enabled.
    EIST will also mean that the CPU will lower its clock frequency according to workload and reduce overall temperatures.
    Also all 6xx CPUs will support XD tech (Execute Disable) like its predecessors to stop the buffer overflow bug which allowed some viruses to take effect as they did.

    The fastest clockspeed series will still be the 5xx series which has the 570J with 3.80GHz while the fastest 6xx series chip is the 660 @ 3.60GHz.
    There is still room for the new faster CPUs to come out within this product family. In Q2 2005 Intel is going to announce the Pentium 4 670 working at 3.8GHz.

    Performance

    The 100% increase in cache doesn't produce a noticable increase in performance since most consumer and office applications just doesn't require the additonal cache, only on server workloads will this make much of a difference.

    Most benchmarks, both the 6xx series and A64 CPUs are about even, with the Athlon64s ahead in 3DMark tests and the Intel CPUs ahead in some synthetic situations.

    Xbit's PCMark 04 Scores
    As usual A64s were better in all gaming apps so no point showing them here, but what is interesting is that the 6xx series did not beat the 5xx series in all tests. Eg. the 550 sometimes beat the 660 in some benchmarks.

    Xbit Worldbench Scores

    In office benchmarks, both CPU families did well in different tests.

    I've tried to condense a lot of info but there are many more benchmarks etc here:
    Anandtech
    XBitLabs
     

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