What defines a Pentium 4 as 3.0/3.2/3.4?

BeatFreak

It's that time of the month again, I'm buying a new machine. After much anguish and turmoil I've decided to ditch AMD (after 3 funfilled years) and go with a Pentium 4 for a change. But here's where the problem arrises, should I buy a 3.2 or a 3.4?

Now I'm pretty sure everyone will be advising me to buy the 3.2 and clock it to 3.4, no big deal, I've plenty of experience oc'ing and I'll save ~€200 which isn't bad.

But I got thinking about what makes the 3.4 a 3.4. They are all Northwood's so basically the same chip (exactly the same core architecture even?) but I assume a 3.4 has to pass more rigorous that a 3.2 to pass as a 3.4 right? Similar to the way certain Radeon 9800's (can't remember which, SE?) start as 9800Pro's but don't pass certain tests so pipelines get disabled and they are bundled as a lower spec card.

Is there a similar situation with P4's? What I'm trying to figure out is if I bought a 3.4 would I end up with a higher clock than a 3.2 for example? Or are they just the same chip with higher multipliers?

I've tried googling for more info but because the 3.4 is a relatively new chip and we arn't at a stage where people can say for sure that a 3.4 is a great clocker like the way we say a 2500+ barton or 2.4 P4C is.

It's not about saving money it's more about not being ripped off buying a chip which is alot more expensive but would preform on a par with a chip that's half it's price. I wanna know the inside scoop on this one, so any Intel engineers about ?

P.S I also realise that it comes down to luck how well it will clock but I wanna help my chances

Woden

the only difference is the multiplier which is locked on pentiums bar the engineering samples, so the 3.2 is 200*16 and the 3.4 is 200*17

with regards to overclocking some people typically like to take a low frequency chip with a low multi and up its fsb as for example a 3.0ghz at 200*15 would have poorer performance then an overclocked 2.4 chip that was running at 3.0ghz via 250*12 due to the much wider fsb.

so yes if you bought a 3.4 you could probably get it running higher then if you bought a 3.2 but i reckon you'd get a higher fsb out of the 3.2 perhaps but again no gurantees.

the question is will you get say a 70% performance increase to justify the 70% or whatever it is increase in cost from a 3.2ghz, to a 3.4ghz pentium and i can tell now thats a no

you might also want to look at the prescotts which though aren't great at low clock speed they are meant to scale well and when they hit say 3.8-4.0ghz i think they are meant to outperform equivalently clocked northwood. ripping off anandtech the performance delta decreases as the clock speed is ramped up.

yes heat is an issue with the prescotts but iirc you have one of the fancy mach, prommie devices.

i'm sure the intel boys will be alone soon with more info for ya

Azza

Your abondoning AMD just when they are level again or slightly ahead of intel.

po0k

Get yourself a MiniITX - Cyrix all the way baby yeah!

Gerry

Its not really an intel or amd specific thing. While both companies have different conditions to deal with, in terms of yield, and demand for different speed grades, the same principles apply.
Chipmakers test all chips the highest speed possible for that model/stepping of cpu. If it fails, they test at the next speed down, and so on, until it passes. There is always a margin built in, they like to give as much as possible, so that the cpu will run nice and stable even close to its maximal specified operating temperature. ( and the more margin, the higher temp they can specify ).
In ideal situations, ( for the consumer ), every working chip ends up working at the highest frequency. This happened late on with the pentium mmx, every chip would run at 233, or higher. In this case, the maker just marks cpu's down to lower grades, according to demand. Because of the pricing, there will always be very strong demand for the low - medium speed chips.

So the overclockability depends on the demand for particular speed grades, and the yield.
Currently though, yields are only reasonable, so there probably is a slight difference between a 3.2 and a 3.4 in terms of overclockability. However, even this may vary between batches. I don't think there is $200 difference though

BeatFreak

Dataisgod : I think your right about the performance/price ratio, I'm thinking I might buy the 3.2ghz and invest the extra money in lower latency ram. As regards the Prescott; I can't say I've been too impressed with the benches I've seen seems like it's only certain specialist areas where it outpreforms the Northwood. Oh and I'll be on air in this one, I sold my Vapochill last week the noisey bastid, mind you I was sad to see it go...

Azza : I'm abandoning AMD (temporarily) mostly because I want a change and also because I don't want to buy a 754 chip at the moment, the mobo's are still in their infancy, and by the looks of it 754 is going to be the budget range. I want something with a bit of life so I'll use this P4 till 939 and PCI express hit the shelves

Syxpak : I've got one already thanks, but I see the new 1.2Ghz Nehemiah C5P Core is looking quite lovely and preforming very well, along with the new 7" TFT's on linitx.com so maybe that will be the next project.

BeatFreak

Thanks for that Gerry, I had a feeling that was the situation and its not worth gambling 200 eurons for a few mhz. I think thats the last nail in the coffin as regards 3.2 or 3.4 question now to decide what ram to buy...

Kunst

try this one......STOP BUYING NEW GEAR!!!!

no?....didn't think it'd catch on

Col_Loki

3.2ghz with Ram that would do 230mhz with tight timings would be ideal i think (BH5/6 Chips)....... that'd leave you up about 3.7ghz and thats possible with good air cooling and a good chip.

Woden

don't get too cut up about ram timings though higher fsb will quickly out way any benefits. actually don't get too cut up about ram in general, anything from any of the decent manufacturers, ocz, corsair, mushkin will do the job i doubt you'll notice the different unless you're an uber benchmarker. i reckon you should be getting ram capable of doing 250mhz no bother anyway or as loki mentioned tight pc3700 ram that will go higher then 233mhz if required. you could get a real nice chip that might just wanna go up and up , theres pc4000 ocz that will do 2.5-4-4-7 no too shabby.

back to air or water cooling? for air cooling a p4 i recommend the thermalright heatsinks there is a version for socket 478 chips with heatpipes perhaps the sp-94 i think. and then you can put your choice of fan on it up to 92mm

Col_Loki

Tighter Ram timings are actually very important on the P4's (news to me TBH). Ive been reading alot into it and it apears that Pc3200 Ram with tight timings can actually out perform Pc4000 with looser ones........ have a look at these links. (this apply's alot to gaming)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index-05.html
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=873&page=4
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon64-3200.html


If the Pc3200 with tight timings is beating the Pc4000, you can imagine the performance increase of running the ram at 230mhz with 2-2-2-5 timings .....

Azza

Socket 754 Buget range hmmm I dont think so....if matchs P4 in speed and is a little bit dearer...but of course when os arrives your going get a performance boast you won't be getting that from any current P4 chip. Although its a unkown quanitity at the moment if it matchs linux distrabutions won't be too shabby. Unless your buying an extreme edition P4 you wont notice any real difference.


If you refering to the fx range performace gap is minimal at the moment or are you refering to the new socket for amd 64.

Anyway P4 is just as good in 32bit has its plus and weakness and you won't go wrong either way just to me the benefit having a software upgrade just a few months up the road tips it towards the AMDs for me.

Col_Loki

I think he ment more that the Socket939 is comming out which will include AMD64 & Fx versions of the chips (basically depending on cache size, 64's having 512kb and fx having 1mb L2).

The socket754 is the AMD flagship socket at the min BUT is set to become a slightly more budget option as time goes on and the 939 takes over. They will continue making chips for the 754 , it depends alot on sales but if what AMD is predicting comes true (ie they sell all there predicted yields) then the 754 will be around for quite a bit. AFAIK its going to be '05 before the 939 chips overtake the 754 production wise, and the initial ammount of 939 chips will be low (from what ive heard) which means they will be expensive and force people to go for 754 versions.

Performance wise i dont thing the dual channel is going to add all that much , especially when it comes to gaming..........

Woden

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Tighter Ram timings are actually very important on the P4's (news to me TBH). Ive been reading alot into it and it apears that Pc3200 Ram with tight timings can actually out perform Pc4000 with looser ones........ have a look at these links. (this apply's alot to gaming)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index-05.html
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=873&page=4
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon64-3200.html


If the Pc3200 with tight timings is beating the Pc4000, you can imagine the performance increase of running the ram at 230mhz with 2-2-2-5 timings .....

interesting that cheers for the info, so its can be more beneficial for the p4 to be run asynchronously with tighter ram then insync with loose ram timings. difference is small though 230mhz at 2-2-2-5 would be nice any ram like that still knocking about? i thought ocz where trying to dispell the timings thingy with the release of enhanced bandwidth series it didn't top the Enhanced latency 2-2-2-5 stuff

Col_Loki

The difference is small yea, but thats running tight timings at 200mhz, running at 220mhz you can expect a bigger margin. The timings are extremely important on the AMD64's aswell, and its best to go with lower bandwidth and tighter timings for almost every game ive seen.

The OCZ platinum EL special edition has winbond BH chips, also the Mushkin L2. Im not so sure about reaching 230mhz without high voltage 3v+ , but still 220mhz + should be achievable and would be better than running Pc4000/4200 in sync at slow ones.

BeatFreak

Yeah COL_LOKI I've seen those review too and I've been looking for decent ram but still can't decide on what to get everything with high bandwidth has crap latency... I was checking on Komplett mostly because I'm trying to buy everything from them for handyness sake but it looks like unless I go PC3200 I can't get anything with LL... I guess I'll have to shop else where mind you Komplett don't do Antec and I want my 550W truepower back so I suppose I'll have to shop around anyways I don't suppose you could recommend some decent LL ram off the top of your head? Something that Overclock.co.uk or Overclockers.co.uk supply?

BeatFreak

Oh and Azza this is what I ment. The 754 range will be discontinued after the 3700+ and only used for lower range chips.

Woden

check out www.shop4memory.com they have some good pc3500 ram with decent timings they have some muskhin 2-3-3 for example

http://www.mushkin.com/epages/Mushkin.storefront/4097f24f0260f7462740c0a801020622/Product/View/991087

BeatFreak

I was trying my best to stick to 2 suppliers in a vain effort to save SOME money... But then again iirc Shop4memory.co.uk (same as .com) have free shipping don't they. Just checking http://www.overclock.co.uk and they have OCZ PC4000 Gold Dual Channel 2 x 512 MB DDR EL Memory which is at 2.5 which isnt bad at all, mind you it is 424 eurons apparently. Which is not so nice... Hmmm guess who's going to be doing extra overtime for the forseeable future

Col_Loki

I can't get anything with LL...

The OCZ Pc3200 Platinum EL has winbond BH chips which are fantastic for LL and pretty high FSB......

Or ive seen P4 systems with OCZ Pc3700 EL (2.5, 3, 3, 7 timings stuff on pc-memory-upgrade) that are doing 250mhz + at 2-3-3-7 timings which is pretty tight with big bandwidth.

TBH Winbond BH5 was pretty much the king and although BH6 is good i dont know if its as good.

Here's a list of Ram with BH5/6 and CH5 Winbond chips. The CH5 is also a great overclocker but not as tight timings, generally 2-3-3-7 @ 230-245mhz depends on voltage and luck TBH.
Corsair XMS3200LLPT , looks like a good option either.
http://pub.lorenz.bei.t-online.de/winbondlist.htm


[edit] Being realistic about it 220-230mhz FSB is prob what your going to be running. Looking at a 32.ghz chip and Pc4000 memory would mean you need 4ghz to run your Ram 1:1.

BeatFreak

I've bought pretty much everything now and I had to compromise in the ram departement but I was running out of luck... In the end I bought a gig of GeIL PC4000 ultra series Cas 2.5 from OCUK, but only because I couldn't get PC3700 anywhere, infact I must say I'm very dissapointed with http://www.shop4memory.co.uk and http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk (both the same company) I emailed them about 6/7 times and each time they said they were out of stock even though the website shows stock. Apparently there's been a foul up somewhere but it's very annoying getting your hopes up when you find the perfect ram try buy it and they don't actually have it in stock, then compromise, go for a lower spec ram and it turns out that they don't that that either and repeat about 4 times...

Anyways according to OCUK i should have it friday (fingers crossed) and then if the rest of my gear arrives from Komplett I should have her up and running by the weekend

She should be a looker with the P160 andthis PSU and a few ccfl's so if you like I'll take a few pix and post them up here to see what you guys think

Woden

aye pics please and some benchmarks and how it overclocks in general

what graphic card you putting in it?

Col_Loki

Yea i used to have that Ram myself. Its pretty decent Ram but doesent like tight timings at all at all, anything under the rated and its hard to get it to post.

Just hope your FSB goes above 240mhz to take some sort of advantage of it.
Hope she goes well for you anyway!!

BeatFreak

I'll be throwing the ol' 9800XT into her for the moment, but I must say those preliminary reports on the X800 look stupidly sweet so I'll be lining up overtime every night for the next 2 months

I'll write out the full specs when it's built (mostly cause I can't remember half of what's going into her) and get some wee pics to accompany it

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Or ive seen P4 systems with OCZ Pc3700 EL (2.5, 3, 3, 7 timings stuff on pc-memory-upgrade) that are doing 250mhz + at 2-3-3-7 timings which is pretty tight with big bandwidth.

I'd be really interested in any links you have to that Col. I tried dropping to 2-3-3-7, but it wasn't a happy bunny. BTW, was that 1:1 or another ratio?

TBH I haven't tweaked since I got this stable O/C, but I still wanna break that 7k barrier on 3DM03

Col_Loki

Sorry should have mentioned that was with quite high Vdimm voltage. Its generally unhappy with anything less than a CAS of 2.5 . I think the voltage was up round 3.2/3.3v and FSB was up to 265mhz........ ill see if i can dig it up but it was a while back and ive been lookin at alot of Ram stuff over the last week.

The CPU limited the FSB in this case BTW so not sure if the ram would have went higher or not.

Col_Loki

Yea this is the place i was reading about it........ http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53142&highlight=520+PC3700+Gold