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Pentium 4 - Now at 1.8 GHz

(my last) Toronto Star Fast Forward column for July 12, 2001

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2001. All rights reserved.

There once was a time when a 300 MHz increase in Intel processor speed would have been cause for incredible ooohing and ahhing in computerland. But, once speeds jumped from over 1,000 MHz (1 GHz) to the heady numbers we look at today, 300 MHz represents only a small increase in performance.

That came home in a rush recently when I had the opportunity to upgrade a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 system to Intel's newest speed limit, 1.8 GHz.

The latest revision of the Pentium 4 was released to the public on July 2, without much fanfare. After all, this isn't where the California-based chip giant is going to stop. The company has already announced that it will reach 2 GHz (yes, 2,000 MHz) before this year is up. There's also a new processor support chipset, a smaller processor die, and a new pin-out arrangement coming this year, too. And my suspicion is that this 423-pin, 1.8 GHz version of the Pentium 4 will be the last of its class.

	Pentium 4 motherboard (Intel), ready for new processor
	A naked Pentium 4 processor, getting a fix of heat transferring grease.  Yes, that's my chubby paw in the picture. The camera is in the other hand. Versatile, ain't I?
	Done deed. With a heat sink/fan attached, this 1.8 GHz unit is ready to fly...

Raw numbers

According to my test suite of choice this year, Passmark's Preformance Test 3.4 (www.passmark.com), the "1.5" GHz Pentium 4 has an estimated actual speed of 1,495 MHz. The 1.8 GHz P4 racks up 1,794 MHz. That has some interesting implications.

For example, there's an average 19 per cent improvement in integer (whole number) addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication speeds as well as a similar increase in floating point (numbers with decimals) math.

There's an almost 25 per cent difference in the number of floating point operations per second.

While your graphics processor will have a lot to do with how quickly images change on your monitor, the CPU plays a role, too. So, while there was no difference in how quickly 2-dimensional bitmaps were rendered, everything else jumped. 2-D lines and shapes appeared about 15 per cent more quickly; while 3-D rendering was nearly 20 per cent faster.

Memory read, write, and small-block allocation went up, too, averaging (again), about 19 per cent better.

MMX (multimedia) numbers for addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication were all up the same average of around 19 per cent.

Over all, the PassMark rating for the same system, with only the processor change to make a difference, went from 188 to 213.8. The quick among you will quickly do the math and discover that the overall rating dropped from around 19 to 12 per cent. The reason is an anomaly with hard drive performance numbers.

For some reason I'm still waiting for Intel to explain, sequential read and write were both off – by 55 and 25 per cent respectively. It may have something to do with system speed overwhelming drive buffer speed, but when we get to the bottom of the problem, I'll report it here in my next "letters" column.

So...

Based on Intel's July 2 price list, there's nearly a US$300 difference between the 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 and the 1.8 GHz version (in lots of 1,000). That should translate into a roughly $600 difference at the Canadian retail level.

Only you can decide whether a 12 to 19 per cent performance difference – with 20 per cent often the practical cutoff point below which it's hard to feel any difference – is worth the cost differential.

Where next?

There's no doubt in my mind whether a typical home computer user or small business clerical user needs a 1.8 or 2 GHz Pentium 4. They don't. In fact, most people who fit into those categories will be tickled pink with a high-end Celeron or AMD Duron-based box in the 800 MHz range. If you want to push things a bit, I can even see making a case for either a faster Pentium III or AMD Athlon in the 1+ GHz category, but only if the type of applications you use can justify it.

Pentium 4 processors, at least in their current revision, are optimized for gaming and Internet multimedia applications. They are not focussed on business or home productivity applications. That's why you've been hearing conflicting reports on whether the high-end Athlons or P4s are "faster." It depends entirely on which benchmark testing suite is run and the mix of application types run with it.

However, along with gaming and Internet apps, the P4 is also geared for multimedia production. If you're building complex Web pages, designing a magazine layout, creating artwork, manipulating photographic images, working with video and audio – and you've decided to do these things on a PC instead of a Mac for some reason – then the fastest P4 you can lay your hands on is the tool you need, especially if you're doing it for money.

This just in...

As I was writing this week's column (last week, actually), Apple dropped the other shoe. Although it was a grand experiment and my colleague, Ian Masters, swears by his, the G4 Cube is toast. According to an Apple Canada press release, the majority of Mac buyers in the past year who might have bought the diminutive but powerful Cube opted for the mini-tower version of the G4 instead.

Gee, and I thought they were kinda cute. C'est la vie!

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