Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955: 65nm, 4 threads and 376M transistors
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 30, 2005 11:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Intel's move to their 65nm process has gone extremely well. We've had 65nm Presler, Cedar Mill and Yonah samples for the past couple of months now and they have been just as good as final, shipping silicon. Just a couple of months ago we previewed Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 and showcased their reduction in power consumption as well as took an early look at overclocking potential of the chips.
Intel's 65nm Pentium 4s will be the last Pentium 4s to come out of Santa Clara and while we'd strongly suggest waiting to upgrade until we've seen what Conroe will bring us, there are those who can't wait another six months, and for those who are building or buying systems today, we need to find out if Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 processors are any more worthwhile than the rather disappointing chips that we had at 90nm.
The move to 90nm for Intel was highly anticipated, but it could not have been any more disappointing from a performance standpoint. In a since abandoned quest for higher clock speeds, Intel brought us Prescott at 90nm with its 31 stage pipeline - up from 20 stages in the previous generation Pentium 4s. Through some extremely clever and effective engineering, Prescott actually wasn't any slower than its predecessors, despite the increase in pipeline stages. What Prescott did leave us with, however, was a much higher power bill. Deeply pipelined processors generally consume a lot more power, and Prescott did just that.
Intel tried to minimize the negative effects of Prescott as much as possible through technologies like their Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST). However, at the end of the day, the fastest Athlon 64 consumed less power under full load than the slowest Prescott at idle. Considering that most PCs actually spend the majority of their time idling, this was truly a letdown from Intel.
With 65nm, the architecture of the chips won't change at all - in fact, the single-core 65nm Pentium 4s based on the Cedar Mill core will be identical to the current Pentium 4 600 series that we have today (with the inclusion of Intel's Virtualization Technology). So with no architectural changes, the power consumption at 65nm should be lower than at 90nm. As we found in our first article on Intel's 65nm chips, power consumption did indeed go down quite a bit; however, it's still not low enough to be better than AMD. It will take Conroe before Intel can offer a desktop processor with lower power consumption than AMD's 90nm Athlon 64 line.
In an odd move, just before the end of 2005, Intel is introducing their first 65nm processor. Not the Cedar Mill based Pentium 4 and not even the Presler based Pentium D, but rather the Presler based Pentium Extreme Edition 955.
The Presler core is Intel's dual-core 65nm successor to Smithfield, which as you will remember was Intel's first dual-core processor. Presler does actually offer one architectural improvement over Smithfield and that is the use of a 2MB L2 cache per core, up from 1MB per core in Smithfield. Other than that, Presler is pretty much a die-shrunk version of Smithfield.
With 2MB cache on each core, the transistor count of Presler has gone up a bit. While Smithfield weighed in at a whopping 230M transistors, Presler is now up to 376M. The move to 65nm has actually made the chip smaller at 162 mm2, down from 206 mm2. With a smaller die size, Presler is actually cheaper for Intel to make than Smithfield, despite having twice the cache. Equally impressive is that Cedar Mill, the single core version, measures in at a meager 81 mm2.
The Extreme Edition incarnation of Presler brings back support for the 1066MHz FSB, which you may remember was lost with the original move to dual-core. Given that both cores on the chip have to share the same bus, more FSB bandwidth will always help performance.
The Pentium Extreme Edition 955 runs at 3.46GHz (1066MHz FSB), thus giving it a clock speed advantage over all of Intel's other dual-core processors. And as always, the EE chip offers Hyper Threading support on each of its two cores allowing the chip to handle a maximum of four threads at the same time. Since it's an Extreme Edition chip, the 955 will be priced at $999. If you're curious about the cheaper, non-Extreme versions of Presler, here is Intel's 65nm dual-core roadmap for 2006:
As you can see, the Extreme Edition 955 will be the first, but definitely not the only dual-core 65nm processor out in the near future, so don't let the high price tag worry you. The remaining 900 series Pentium D chips should come with prices much closer to the equivalent 800 series.
Intel's 65nm Pentium 4s will be the last Pentium 4s to come out of Santa Clara and while we'd strongly suggest waiting to upgrade until we've seen what Conroe will bring us, there are those who can't wait another six months, and for those who are building or buying systems today, we need to find out if Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 processors are any more worthwhile than the rather disappointing chips that we had at 90nm.
The move to 90nm for Intel was highly anticipated, but it could not have been any more disappointing from a performance standpoint. In a since abandoned quest for higher clock speeds, Intel brought us Prescott at 90nm with its 31 stage pipeline - up from 20 stages in the previous generation Pentium 4s. Through some extremely clever and effective engineering, Prescott actually wasn't any slower than its predecessors, despite the increase in pipeline stages. What Prescott did leave us with, however, was a much higher power bill. Deeply pipelined processors generally consume a lot more power, and Prescott did just that.
Intel tried to minimize the negative effects of Prescott as much as possible through technologies like their Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST). However, at the end of the day, the fastest Athlon 64 consumed less power under full load than the slowest Prescott at idle. Considering that most PCs actually spend the majority of their time idling, this was truly a letdown from Intel.
With 65nm, the architecture of the chips won't change at all - in fact, the single-core 65nm Pentium 4s based on the Cedar Mill core will be identical to the current Pentium 4 600 series that we have today (with the inclusion of Intel's Virtualization Technology). So with no architectural changes, the power consumption at 65nm should be lower than at 90nm. As we found in our first article on Intel's 65nm chips, power consumption did indeed go down quite a bit; however, it's still not low enough to be better than AMD. It will take Conroe before Intel can offer a desktop processor with lower power consumption than AMD's 90nm Athlon 64 line.
In an odd move, just before the end of 2005, Intel is introducing their first 65nm processor. Not the Cedar Mill based Pentium 4 and not even the Presler based Pentium D, but rather the Presler based Pentium Extreme Edition 955.
The Presler core is Intel's dual-core 65nm successor to Smithfield, which as you will remember was Intel's first dual-core processor. Presler does actually offer one architectural improvement over Smithfield and that is the use of a 2MB L2 cache per core, up from 1MB per core in Smithfield. Other than that, Presler is pretty much a die-shrunk version of Smithfield.
With 2MB cache on each core, the transistor count of Presler has gone up a bit. While Smithfield weighed in at a whopping 230M transistors, Presler is now up to 376M. The move to 65nm has actually made the chip smaller at 162 mm2, down from 206 mm2. With a smaller die size, Presler is actually cheaper for Intel to make than Smithfield, despite having twice the cache. Equally impressive is that Cedar Mill, the single core version, measures in at a meager 81 mm2.
The Extreme Edition incarnation of Presler brings back support for the 1066MHz FSB, which you may remember was lost with the original move to dual-core. Given that both cores on the chip have to share the same bus, more FSB bandwidth will always help performance.
The Pentium Extreme Edition 955 runs at 3.46GHz (1066MHz FSB), thus giving it a clock speed advantage over all of Intel's other dual-core processors. And as always, the EE chip offers Hyper Threading support on each of its two cores allowing the chip to handle a maximum of four threads at the same time. Since it's an Extreme Edition chip, the 955 will be priced at $999. If you're curious about the cheaper, non-Extreme versions of Presler, here is Intel's 65nm dual-core roadmap for 2006:
| Intel Dual Core Desktop | ||||
| CPU | Core | Clock | FSB | L2 Cache |
| ??? | Conroe | ??? | ??? | 4MB |
| ??? | Conroe | ??? | ??? | 2MB |
| 950 | Presler | 3.4GHz | 800MHz | 2x2MB |
| 940 | Presler | 3.2GHz | 800MHz | 2x2MB |
| 930 | Presler | 3.0GHz | 800MHz | 2x2MB |
| 920 | Presler | 2.8GHz | 800MHz | 2x2MB |
As you can see, the Extreme Edition 955 will be the first, but definitely not the only dual-core 65nm processor out in the near future, so don't let the high price tag worry you. The remaining 900 series Pentium D chips should come with prices much closer to the equivalent 800 series.
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JarredWalton - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
See above post. The 3800+ OC article has the BF2 benchmarks/tools in it.bob4432 - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
thanks, i had just found that. excellent tool ;). what is the difference between average fps and actual fps?Spacecomber - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
If you need more direction on how to go about creating and running a timedemo in BF2, take a look at http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=3841...">this article over at overclockers.com.au.The timedemo records the time it takes for each frame to be rendered over the course of the demo being run. It sums these times and divides by the number of frames to come up with an average. You end up with just one number standing in for a rather large collection of data. Some sites, such as hardocp, try to show more than just an average, usually by presenting a graph of the framerates over the length of the timedemo. This can be helpful, because when you are trying to evaluate how well a particular hardware setup will work with your favorite game, you really are looking to see whether it will maintain playable minimun framerates at the resolution and graphics settings that you want to use. An average alone only gives you a rough idea about this, though it does give you a quick and dirty way to compare different video cards in the same game setting.
If you create and run a Battlefield 2 timedemo and look at the complete results, you'll see how very wide the range of framerates is. For example, running the timedemo, I have gotten an average of 50 fps, but the range is from 2 to 105 fps, with a standard deviation of 12.3. Graphing out the individual frame rates will let you see how often the frame rates drop below 20 fps, for example, which many would consider too low for online gaming.
http://www.sequoyahcomputer.com/Analysis/BF2memory...">Here is a graph of a BF2 timedemo. It's for the data that gave me an average of 50 fps that I mentioned previously. Although 50 fps sounds like an ok average, looking at the graph, you can see that many might consider these settings on this hardware to be barely playable.
Space
bob4432 - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
thanks, what program did you use to graph the data?Spacecomber - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
The full results of the time demo are saved in a csv file, timedemo_framerates.csv, which can be opened with a spreadsheet program. I used the spreadsheet program in OpenOffice to view the data and eliminate the framerates that are erroneously recorded before the actual gameplay demo has begun (they are easy to recognize, since they are at the begining of the data and unnaturally high), and I also used the spreadsheet program to graph the data.Space
JarredWalton - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
I believe Anand is using the same benchmark that I http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">linked in my Overclocking article. He's probably running the 1.12 version now, which would account for the slightly lower scores than what I got with the 1.03 version and demo files. BF2 is VERY GPU limited, so even at 1024x768 you will start to hit FPS limits on high-end systems. You can see in the above page how FPS scaled with CPU speed on an X2 3800+ chip, and I only improve average frame rates by 18% with a 35% overclock at 1024x768. That dropped to 8% at 1280x1024 and less than 4% at 1600x1200 and above.danidentity - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Has there been any official word on whether or not 975X will support Conroe?coldpower27 - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
a 975X Rev 2.0 is probably needed. However the i965 Chipser series for sure as they are rumored to be launched simultaneously.Shintai - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
You gonna need i965 I bet for sure, specially if Conroe gonna use a 1333Mhz bus.However, Merom should fit in Yonah Socket (Conroe mobile part)
Beenthere - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Every hardware site that has tested the power consumption and operating temps of Presler knows full well this is a 65 nano FLAME THROWER almost making the P4 FLAME THROWER look good by comparison. "Normal" operating temps of 80 C are OUTRAGEOUS as is equal or higher power consumption than the FLAME THROWING P4 series. And as the benches show -this is a Hail Mary approach by Intel to baffle the naive with B.S. No one with a clue would touch this inferior CPU design. And to add insult to injury, after the Paper Launch -- when they are actually available for purchase in Feb. or later, the asking price is $999. Yeah, I'll run right out and buy a truckload of Preslers to use for space heaters in my house...