Intel's 65nm Processors: Overclocking Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 25, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Intel's move to 65nm is very much on track; today, we are able to test working samples at shipping clock speeds of Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors. This means that quite a bit of work has taken place between two IDFs ago where we first saw Presler at 2.0GHz and today when we're able to overclock the core to 4.25GHz with minimal effort.
The new cores do definitely overclock much better than their predecessors, and they will allow any serious overclocker to reach speeds greater than 4.0GHz effortlessly. Most exciting to us was the 4.25GHz overclock that we saw on Presler, as a 4.25GHz Pentium D will truly be a formidable opponent to AMD's Athlon 64 X2. Cedar Mill offered reasonable overclocking headroom as well, but we would have liked to see a 5.0GHz overclock on standard air cooling, given that reaching 4.0GHz is possible today on Prescott.
The reduction in power consumption is impressive, but still not enough to give Intel an advantage over AMD, which makes things better, but hardly fixes the problem in our opinion. Unfortunately, we will have to wait for Intel's next-generation processors for a true competitor to AMD's low power Athlon 64s.
We have concluded this preview with one major unanswered question: how well does Intel's Presler perform compared to Smithfield, given that each core in Presler has twice the L2 cache of those in Smithfield? With our curiosities piqued, it won't be long before we try to answer that question...
Intel's move to 65nm is very much on track; today, we are able to test working samples at shipping clock speeds of Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors. This means that quite a bit of work has taken place between two IDFs ago where we first saw Presler at 2.0GHz and today when we're able to overclock the core to 4.25GHz with minimal effort.
Presler was running at only 2.0GHz less than a year ago.
The new cores do definitely overclock much better than their predecessors, and they will allow any serious overclocker to reach speeds greater than 4.0GHz effortlessly. Most exciting to us was the 4.25GHz overclock that we saw on Presler, as a 4.25GHz Pentium D will truly be a formidable opponent to AMD's Athlon 64 X2. Cedar Mill offered reasonable overclocking headroom as well, but we would have liked to see a 5.0GHz overclock on standard air cooling, given that reaching 4.0GHz is possible today on Prescott.
The reduction in power consumption is impressive, but still not enough to give Intel an advantage over AMD, which makes things better, but hardly fixes the problem in our opinion. Unfortunately, we will have to wait for Intel's next-generation processors for a true competitor to AMD's low power Athlon 64s.
We have concluded this preview with one major unanswered question: how well does Intel's Presler perform compared to Smithfield, given that each core in Presler has twice the L2 cache of those in Smithfield? With our curiosities piqued, it won't be long before we try to answer that question...
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Beenthere - Friday, October 28, 2005 - link
In my not so humble opinion, one could write a doctorate thesis on the mistakes Intel has made in design and execution of it's PC products over the past 6 years. With today's announcement that Intel is canceling "White powder up Hotellini's nose" and "Tuck it up your butt Willy", you know the fools on the hill have no clue. As anyone in the IT industry knows, Intel does not respond well to competition let alone superior products by the competition. Intel has made one blunder after the other since AMD launched Athlon years ago. Intel has had repeated defective products, canceled products, delayed products, missed delivery dates, factory closings, chipset shortages requiring them to buy ATI chipsets, etc. The list of BLUNDERS by Intel is almost endless and continues as I write.http://www.theregister.com/2005/10/29/intel_xeon_2...">http://www.theregister.com/2005/10/29/intel_xeon_2...
Having a marginal 65 nano process at best, which actually just about competes on power consumption with AMD's 90 nano process, shows quite clearly that Intel is WAY behind the eightball despite the media hype! As history has shown, despite the years of denial, the P4 was a defective design rushed to market to try and kill Athlon, which it never accomplished. Now with Intel's most recent chip "delays" which will turn to cancellations next year, you will see some more cobbled crap from Intel that only losers would even consider buying.
So once again just as with their 90 nano process, that was according to Intel: "ahead of their development schedule", and then showed up in the marketplace over a year LATE and it was STILL a defective design as released with massive voltage leakage that required special cooling, cases, etc. Intel's 65 nano process hasn't even allowed them to catch up to AMD's existing products. It's all just hype and no substance, as usual for Intel.
What we have is Intel's PR machine spinning overtime as usual and no competitive products ANYWHERE in Intel's product line. They even lost their minimal advantage with the Pentium M in the laptop segment as the 25W and 35W Turions have stolen Intel's lunch. Bottom line is only a fool would buy any Intel product in the foreseeable future when AMD's products, by virtually all industry standards and reports, are far, far superior. It's encouraging to see consumers voting with their wallets. At least some consumers and industry sources have seen thru Intel's deception and purchased AMD products. Intel's days of extortion are pretty much over now that the cat is outta the bag.
IntelUser2000 - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Beenthere, how is having bad processor equate to having bad process technology??? Are most people that uninformed and stupid??? If Intel introduced Dothan for their first 90nm part, then people would have been praising Intel's 90nm process. Intel rather put Prescott out first, so people thought badly about it. If you DO read about what happened, focus has been all shifted to Merom/Conroe, OUT OF CEDARMILL/PRESLER PROJECTS. What happens then?? All the speedpath optimizations and low power optimizations that are supposed to go to Cedarmill/Presler went to Merom/Conroe. Merom will be ~30W DESPITE the fact its dual core, 4-wide architecture. Does Pentium M have low power compared to Prescott because its on a better process technology??? No.Intel has one of the best 90nm process, if not THE best.
Thatguy97 - Monday, May 25, 2015 - link
conroe proved you an idioteljefeII - Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - link
hehehe, yeah! yeah! intel s-s-smokes! yeah yeah!65 nm did like, um, a lot, yea, hhehhe. I don't see anything heheh, hehehhe. hehehhe.
Shut up beavis. Just like buy it and stuff.
hehhe yeah! buy it BUY IT BUY IT!!!
Zebo - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - link
It's nice to see this will be a decent enthusiast chip.. Guys should get 1500-2000Mhz overclocks which will put some excitment into to the overclocking scene again. Sure stock they will suck but people I know don't run that way. A 4.5Ghz Cedar is fast no doubt about it probably equates to a 3Ghz A64 in a round table of benchmarks. As it happens 3Ghz seems pretty normal these days especially with the new Opteron 939's. So it would be great to hold a "overclockers shootout" of some sort when you guys have time. Say a 144 Opteron vs. Pentium 631 :DOne small error PP: 2 "Presler is physically two separate dice on a shared package,"
Die
danidentity - Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - link
The correct term is actually 'dies'. Dice is the plural form of die only when referring to the cube you play board games with. ;)yacoub - Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - link
This man is correct.coldpower27 - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - link
Isn't Dice the plural form of Die though?GonzoDaGr8 - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - link
DiesZebo - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - link
Edit I meant presler and 930 respectivly.