Yeahs and Nays of 2k4 - A good read

Yeah I noticed that he didn't really pick any winners of the year for anything, but I would have to say the winner this year had to be OCZ. With EB memory, DDR booster, an Incredibly succesful line of PSUs and that crazy new ram that takes like 3.3v that everyone is waiting for.

I do agree that loser of the year had to be us though.

The last thought I had about this article is really makes Ed seem biased toward AMD and should put rest that he hates AMD. Although he has some pretty lofty goals for AMD next year.

speed bump said:

The last thought I had about this article is really makes Ed seem biased toward AMD and should put rest that he hates AMD. Although he has some pretty lofty goals for AMD next year.

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This made me think the same thing.

As for declaring winners, although there were no landslide victories really, I agree that it would have been possible to be less wishy-washy. I think if you look objectively, you can find modest winners in some of those categories where he named nobody.

I will say though that the article was consistent - Ed is very good at that. He was very underwhelmed by the happenings all year, and this article reflects that well.

also I would say that the mobile XPs were a winner, those were like a holy grail for overclockers, even with my unclocked 2600+ TBred, It fought me to 2.3, the mobile did 2.6 easy. I'd say that was a winner.

dicecca112 said:

also I would say that the mobile XPs were a winner, those were like a holy grail for overclockers, even with my unclocked 2600+ TBred, It fought me to 2.3, the mobile did 2.6 easy. I'd say that was a winner.

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I'd like to disagree. My wimpy $45- 1700+ TbredB is rated at 1477MHz. I have had it Folding at 2520MHz. While that isn't as fast as your 2600+, it is one HEXX of an overclock.

steve

joe has been doing this all year and its getting more than a little tiresome. I used to check hte frontpage and find interesting reviews of nice gadgets, if not hands on guides to the latest "unlocking" trick, or the latest advance in cooling.
well there wal almost none of this teh second half of the year. whether people stopped submitting stuff or joe decided this was his forum for complaining about tech, and generally sounding like a grumpy old man about it, the appeal of the overclockers front page jsut went down down down hill.
let's see, in 2004, we have,

teh first big price drops making hammers affordable
the intro of PCI locked nforce3 mobos
300fsb becoming commonplace (and what is it with this site and its devotion to nforce2? a darn TCCD review uses an NF2 platform for crying out loud - and almost act suprised they cant pass 230fsb....well duh you cant)
vid cards basically doubled in speed, and doing it cooler to boot. all I remember about this is "its too expensive" (all brand new gens of vid cards were - I remember $300+ 32mb cards dont you?) "there arent enough of them" (anyone who couldnt find one wasn't trying) "you'll need a new PSU" (nope, wrong again) "SLI isnt that great" (ummm....30k in 3dmark03...run half life two at max settings and tell me that is worthless)
let's examine some more of jsut today's assertions. dvd drives arent any good because dual layer disks are too expensive? first, no end user lost the format war. every drive sold now is at least a dual format. either format disk can be had for less than $.50 a disk. price of a burner has gone from well over $100 to around $40, even less sometimes. so low it is almost silly to get a cdrw or dvd drive. If you are not a home thatre buff - and despite joe's focus on home thatre/quiet pc's, most of use are not, we are overclockers, you can use a program like dvdshrink to get a movie onto one disk - and it still looks just fine to me. it is as easy as ripping and burning a cd ever was.
so 2003 was the year of the tbred, but the mobile barton was not worth mentioning? sata drives, for all their tiny perofrmance benefits, falling to nearly the price of PATA drives, and being raid-able natively on nearly any mobo not worth mentioning?
there have been advances in cooling that have been neatly ignored too. heatpipe coolers have evolved nicely, and extreme examples like the hyper6, which clock winchesters to almost the same heights as exoctic cooling do not even get a mention on the front page?
I could go on. nearly every phase of out hobby has experienced good growth in this year. things are VERY much different from a year ago, and no doubt they will be VERY much different in a year.

fact is, if there was a piddling year, it was last year. cpus barely had speed bumps at all. from tbred b's of two years ago to last years locked bartons, there were minimal gains. motherboards in that same time went from 200fsb to about 220 average. maybe 230. 10-15%. that's it. graphics card technology was basically the same from the time the 9700 came out until the 9800xt finished it up. small speed bumps.

If you are still milling around on socket a, or maybe on a northwood, believe me, you HAVE been missing fun on 64's. new graphics cards really ARE that nice.

there is an old saying, a stopped clock is right twice a day. well, this is one of those times - in the next couple months, you will see lots of nice nforce4 boards come out, you will see a fall in prices of sli boards and cards, and I think we will see a very nice jump in 90nm AMD performance. annnnnnd, something you may not have heard about, at least on the front page, even though you probably should have, Ati will be comeing out with an nforce fighter motherboard, which I can guarantee will knock your socks off. that is, unless your socks are pulled up to the knee, as I imagine joe's are.
sure his opining about hte direction of the industry is relevent to we overclockers, but who among you, who has been here for awhile, does not think that the gloom and doom of the almost daily updates about events projected for many months or years from now has become the point rather than the aside to the "cover page" for this site?
this is not wired, either, and I am not interested in reading repetative, predicatable opinions about the state of, or legislation pertaining to, file sharing. Especially when the lecturn is being manned by someone convinced that his moral compass points true north, and that other perpsectives are misguided at best and dishonest at worst.
overclockers front page was, and should, be a preeminant source of information to help you clock the latest tech to its full potential. there is still a good number of people among the forums who have not lost that spirit, but for whatever reason, I don't hear it from the bully pulpit.
joe, I gotta think you dont even have a hammer, and darned if I wouldnt strongly consider giving you a platform if I thought it might spark the same joy very many of us are getting from them. every indication I have, though, says that it would be met with staid cynicism.
last thing I am gonna say: we have sub $120 full blown 64's - not semprons, with their measly 256 cache, but full hammers, and we have 753 motherboards as cheap or cheaper than nforce2 boards. despite what many are being told, if you have a tbred, or low clocked non mobile barton, you will enjoy the move to even a $120 64 and $60 64 mobo. you really will. and everytime I see someone talk about their latest socketA purchase, it makes me want to cry.
there, I have said it all, and since this is not a democracy here, I will not be surprised if there is some sort of reprisal. but I needed to say it. I have been noticing it for what seems like forever, and it only seems to be getting worse.
the sky is not falling. overclocking lives. your computer will get faster, and what is more, the new stuff takes more of your brain to get running really well than the old stuff. and we have always been a group that has enjoyed a good challenge.

well skou, not all tbred can oc like that, like my 2600+ unlocked max could do 2.4, with these mobiles 2.6 was almost a guarentee.

__TRONIK__ said:

joe has been doing this all year and its getting more than a little tiresome. I used to check hte frontpage and find interesting reviews of nice gadgets, if not hands on guides to the latest "unlocking" trick, or the latest advance in cooling.
well there wal almost none of this teh second half of the year. whether people stopped submitting stuff or joe decided this was his forum for complaining about tech, and generally sounding like a grumpy old man about it, the appeal of the overclockers front page jsut went down down down hill.

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Ed Stroligo writes the articles, Joe does tech reviews mainly.

As for the reviews, I would expect that Joe has been spending time on perfecting his methods and new gadget for radiator reviews.

Other than that, please post here and let me know if you have, or plan to forward this to Ed - send it to the email address used at the end of his article. I'd like to see his response to your comments. You would want to make these changes - Joe=Ed, 753=754.

Also, the end of the article indicated that there was a lot of optimism for 2005 atleast with respect to AMD's potential.

Tronik, BTW, this is no democracy, so making demands and attacks expecting immediate results would be misfounded. However, there is nothing wrong with providing your subjective opinion and evaluation - this is what the forum is about. Nice write up, and do not hold your breath for any negative reprisal, though I would like to see what Ed's reaction is to your difference of perspective.

UPDATE: I went ahead and emailed Ed and Joe linking them to your post - I genuinely would like to hear these differing opinions contrasted through Ed's perspective. And I think many frontpagers would be interested in hearing it also.

Well Tronic I'll try to give some answers to what you are saying.
Its about time something on S754 is afforadable even though its is a very dead end platform. I havent heard anything about NF4 for S754 have you.
PCI locked NF3 is about time Nvidia was supposed to have it on the orginal NF3s.
How many people have hit 300mhz FSB I certainly haven't seen to many but I don't frequent extreme systems to often.
They tested the ram on the platform they had not the platform you want them to have. I am willing to bet in Feb. or Mar. you will see ram reviews based on the A64 becuase AMD will finally have a revision that OCs well and mature S939 Nforce4 mobos.
My Nforce2 will hit 230mhz easily with decent ram Heck I can already hit 222mhz with not so great ram chips
Yeah vid cards did really well but hey for stuff released 6 months ago they aren't very easy to get a hold of for even retail price let alone below.
If vid cards are running cooler then I can't find a reason why in the world all these companys are coming out with aftermarket coolers. Why are the X850s moving to a dual slot cooling solution? Why can you now buy a video card that comes already loaded with water cooling(BFG 6800U)?
Combined with an A64 a 6800 or x800 sends your average ocer to find a new PSU.
Unless you already have a pretty big PSU two 6800s are going to bring your system down to its knees. If you don't believe it check out the fact that OCZ and PCP&P are coming out with new 600watt monsters with three count em three 12v lines
2003 is long past how many people even had mobiles then? The fact is everyone wanted a tbred B becuase it was the first AMD CPU to get close to 3ghz. Fushyuguru even had one that 2.7ghz on water. That to me is very nice.
SATA was around last year. Heck Raptors are what 1 year and 6 or 8 months old. I wouldn't call that new technology. As far as prices go they should probably be lower as PATA is a dieing technology.
As far as DVD burners go I haven't seen anything all that convincing to buy one as they have been at 16x speed for awhile, If I wan't to burn movies I don't wan't compression so dual layer is a must(a view that is shared by quite a few people on this forum). and I don't want my brand new drive to be obsolete becuase nobodys managed to come out with a cose to affordable SATA model.
If this ATI board is going to be so good then why isn't this being talked about all over. The Nforce 4 is better than Intel can even come up with right now and is even built up enough love that people refused to go VIA even if they had put out something that was as good or better than Nvidia
On Heatpipes I did notice they reviewed the Xp120 which happens to be the cooler that happens to be the most reccomended A64 cooler, and also some of the intial heatpipe cooler designs were reviewed by Joe. You might look in the cooling section on the main page to find out about this if you missed it.

Finally if you don't like whats on the frontpage write articles and submit them. Everyone who writes articles on the frontpage either has a Socket A or 478 or CPU doesn't play into the article. Personally I wan't to see more mobo reviews on the Frontpage so I'm working on one right now. What are you doing?

speed bump said:

Its about time something on S754 is afforadable even though its is a very dead end platform. I havent heard anything about NF4 for S754 have you.

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actually they are very affordable, and very not dead. 2800's have been cheap for some time now. in fact, there have been numerous xp's more expensive than it for quite some time. still are. barton prices have almost not changed at all. Teh barton i got in summer - of 2003 mind you - was $83. the price has not really changed. heck, tbred's are more expensive than they ever were. as for 754, it is not dying. it has been extended, and will occupy the "value" end. having used both 754 and 939, I can tell you that they are not that far apart. A good 939 board is the same price as a good 754 board, and the price premium on a winnie is maybe $25 for a 939 chip. no there is no announcement of nf4 for 754. but all nf4 really means is pci-e and better revisions of the nforce chipset. the chipset revisions WILL trickle down to both nforce3 platforms. just not with pci-e, but you will see better HTT performance. You will also see nf4 with agp, like one already announced by Epox. not to mention that 754 will see 90nm cpus as well.

PCI locked NF3 is about time Nvidia was supposed to have it on the orginal NF3s.

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yeas, and it did not. of course, that was around a year ago. back when it truly didn't make sense to go a64 form a good barton. 64's didnt clock very well, and only gigabyte and shuttle had working locks. nforce3 250 not only had working locks, it allowed 1000mhz HTT, up from 800HTT. those have been available since Q1.

How many people have hit 300mhz FSB I certainly haven't seen to many but I don't frequent extreme systems to often.

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it is no longer all that extreme. it may be around here, since so many have had it ground into them that nforce2 is still where it's at, but good TCCD, like that on brainpower PCB, as typified by that on OCZ Plat. rev2, G.Skill, Patriot XBL, and others, can and does do it with good regularity. In fact they are well above that, 350mhz ram is around. You make a good point about most ram doing 220 on most nforce2. trouble is most nforce2 will not do more than 230. and for that, you do not need very expensive TCCD ram, which has to have its latencies loosened from cl2 in order to hit that limit. $150/gig ram will do just fine, not the $250+/gig ram that was tested. i did not find it particularly well explained in that article that you didnt need ram of that ilk to get those clocks, and not only that, it seemed as though the reviewer was curious as to why he could not get stable higher. way to confuse the reader. if we are so value minded here, why are we testing state of the art, expensive ram on near obsolete platforms?

They tested the ram on the platform they had not the platform you want them to have. I am willing to bet in Feb. or Mar. you will see ram reviews based on the A64 becuase AMD will finally have a revision that OCs well and mature S939 Nforce4 mobos.

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you are kidding right? a good revision? mature motherboards? we have both. we HAVE had both. the DFI is an amazingly good example of a mature socket 754 board. in fact it has to be one of the best motherboards of.....ever. 90nm cpus are routinely getting to 2.7-2.8 on water, and very often, on the boxed heatsink, of all things. newcastles dont lag much behind that. 2.5-2.7ghz is very, very common. this is already a clock for clock match to braton, and clock for clock, the bartons get crushed.

Yeah vid cards did really well but hey for stuff released 6 months ago they aren't very easy to get a hold of for even retail price let alone below.

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again, they are very available. I have two x800 vivos that both modded to xt's (a neat little trick that also got no front page coverage) and I did not have any problem finding them either. and the price is not terribly different than what 9800xt was goning for last winter. cept these are way, way more than a speedbump.

If vid cards are running cooler then I can't find a reason why in the world all these companys are coming out with aftermarket coolers. Why are the X850s moving to a dual slot cooling solution? Why can you now buy a video card that comes already loaded with water cooling(BFG 6800U)?

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oh come on...there have been aftermarket coolers for years...you are an overclocker, right? even ti4200, which could basically run on a northbridge cooler, even passively in some instances, had a bevy of aftermarket coolers available. I have several of swiftech's old waterblocks rfor them right here....wanna buy one? you still run that, right? since it is mature and all? you see arctic silencers because they were immensely popular for 9800's, and because people wanted to *gasp* overclock! and you see premounted waterblocks because they have already been doing this for some time - gainward comes to mind - and it is a clear moneymaking concept. you take a $5 crappy waterblock, and add a $200 price premium. and you get people who assume it must be the best thing going.
fact is, x800 actually takes less power than the 9800. look it up. and the 9800xt I just put in my brothers computer, which features the same cooler as the x800xt, btw, at over 100mhz slower, with half the heatmaking pipes, runs 20c hotter than the x800 at idle.

Combined with an A64 a 6800 or x800 sends your average ocer to find a new PSU.

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maybe with a 6800ultra, but bascially, no, you are wrong. 64's run with less voltage than their predecessors. athlon xp's wer run with up to 2.1v. I ran that. I dont need more than 1.7v on my 64's. and see above, the x800 uses LESS power. if you need to run out and buy a PSU, then you already did. my spare rig runs a 2800+64 and a nvidia 6800nu. it runs very well on a generic, com-in-the-tower, almost-float-away-its-so-light psu.

Unless you already have a pretty big PSU two 6800s are going to bring your system down to its knees. If you don't believe it check out the fact that OCZ and PCP&P are coming out with new 600watt monsters with three count em three 12v lines

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you may need an upgrade form that 400watter for SLI, yes. but you dont need those monsters. those monsters are coming out because they can, and because of oneupsmanship, and because having the biggest anything is alot like having the biggest *youknowwhat* in marketing. it trickles down your product line. jsut ask ati. and bug numbers sell, jsut ask nvidia, who sold a ton of fx5700 256mb cards that were slow as molasses, like slower than ti4200 64mb, jsut based on the 256mb onboard.

2003 is long past how many people even had mobiles then? The fact is everyone wanted a tbred B becuase it was the first AMD CPU to get close to 3ghz. Fushyuguru even had one that 2.7ghz on water. That to me is very nice.

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by the end of the year? no one really had mobiles then, true. tons had bartons by the end of the year. about as many as tbreds, actually. tbreds the cpu of that year? I can defineately agree with that. they got close to 3ghz? nuh uh. nope. sorry. they did about 2.4ghz. with 256cache. and when a few later revisions hit 2.5, barton was already cleaning its clock(s). My complaint was that actually mobiles should have been this years cpu of the year. this was the year of the mobile, in that most all of these forums has had one, and they clocked very high indeed. were they better than 64, and is 64 a loser? nope. I only give mobile the edge because this year truly will be, without a doubt, teh year 64 is the ONLY game in town. and for some of this year, mobile played a pretty darn good game. and no cpu deserved cpu of the year? I think we had two.

SATA was around last year. Heck Raptors are what 1 year and 6 or 8 months old. I wouldn't call that new technology. As far as prices go they should probably be lower as PATA is a dieing technology.

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yes, sata was around. but you didnt read what I wrote. I said that teh performace boost of sata is not all that great. but the interface allows cheap, easy raid on nearly EVERY board out there, even nforce2. and Sata got cheap. in a hurry, too.

As far as DVD burners go I haven't seen anything all that convincing to buy one as they have been at 16x speed for awhile, If I wan't to burn movies I don't wan't compression so dual layer is a must(a view that is shared by quite a few people on this forum). and I don't want my brand new drive to be obsolete becuase nobodys managed to come out with a cose to affordable SATA model.

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who cares about drives getting faster than 16x? when you get good 16x media, that is 7.5 minutes. 32x would be 3.75 minutes. your time that valuable? 2x to 16x = big difference. 16x to 32x = not. And I am saying that compressed dvds are okay until dual layer dsiks get cheap. in the meantime, you get to burn 4.7gb backups, you get compatibility when the disks are cheap, and you only pay about $10 more than if you were buying a cdrw. are you really concerned about your dirve becoming obsolete? really? we have parallel and serial ports on out motherboards, for crying out loud. we have FLOPPY CONNECTORS. yes, my man, we will have PATA connectors for a long, long time to come. until we are not using dvd's anymore I can imagine. and if I get your point of view right, even after motherboards stop offering them, you will still be using one that does.

If this ATI board is going to be so good then why isn't this being talked about all over. The Nforce 4 is better than Intel can even come up with right now and is even built up enough love that people refused to go VIA even if they had put out something that was as good or better than Nvidia

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jsut because you have not heard about it does not mean it does not exist, or will not be any good. many of us have, and believe me, it WILL be good. I am taking part, with others, with ATi desingers in a discussion about features and layout of the to-be-released soon board, in which they are getting out feedback about what we want it to be. it will be a great board. have no doubts, and dont be surprised when you find out this is true.
and did you jsut compare ati to via and intel? *shudder*

On Heatpipes I did notice they reviewed the Xp120 which happens to be the cooler that happens to be the most reccomended A64 cooler, and also some of the intial heatpipe cooler designs were reviewed by Joe. You might look in the cooling section on the main page to find out about this if you missed it.

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no, didnt miss them. it wasnt so much my point that there have not been any heatpipe reviews - there were teh thermalrights, largely because they were sent by heatsink factory, and because this site has reviewed all of the thermalright sinks. but the larger move to heatpipe tech has not really registered here. the hyper6 is an excellent example. breaking records and it still has not been reviewed. nor have the other non-thermalrights. the xp pipes are basically the same or worse performaing that slk's, they jsut allowed thermalright to use something less expensive than copper. but great for them, and still a great product, and I like the big fans. but we should be hearing about the stuff that is outperforming them. [/quotes]

Finally if you don't like whats on the frontpage write articles and submit them. Everyone who writes articles on the frontpage either has a Socket A or 478 or CPU doesn't play into the article. Personally I wan't to see more mobo reviews on the Frontpage so I'm working on one right now. What are you doing?

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one does not have to be doing article to comment on the articles that are there. where do you get that? should we check everyone who has posted, or will post in this thread to see if they have qualified themselves to discuss this by getting an article put up? have you yet? like you, whose opinion does count, even if I violently disagree with it, I actually have been working on an article myself. it details how to mod a phase change into a lian li pc-7x. it also includes the tech i have put into it. It requires more than jsut a couple pictures, and is taking some time. I was not going to mention it yet because of that. I also have been doing it without thinking that it is a shoe in for front page, since it does not deal with socketA, and does not poo-poo current tech, or somehow may be considered too "extreme" for what this crowd seems to have become. oh yes, and of late, like hours before I wrote last night, I am hitting 3ghz on a winchester, stable. on 1.65 volts. and I am not done yet. what were you doing again?
(see I can roll eyes too)

You make some good points but are sadly mistaken on some others Tronic.

I'll start with PSUs, I'm not sure if you understand quite how this works. start with an A64s draw alot of power when pushed beyond the envolope, 6800Us(6800gts flash to Us and 6800nu on occasion have been modded to 6800 almost GTs) have a reccomended PSU of a 480 watter or a really 12v endowed 430. Heck Sentenial was having PSU related problems on an Antec 430 with a gt and a Socket A platform that was stable with a 9800pro. Throw two, and even OEMS are going for the big guns. Why do you think when buying an Alienware with SLI you have to also upgrade to a PCP&C 510?

Then on CPUs, I believe(I don't want to put words in his mouth) Ed is suggesting not upgradeing at the moment becuase AMDs roadmap is rather muddled. So it seems right now that ED is either going with a cheap S754 or going with a S939 system in march. What he has been is the voice of caution. If I had enough money to go S939 right now and was just about ready to drop $500 into a new S939 system and I see see that Ed has pointed out that AMD hasn't quite perfected the 90nm proccess and in about three months I should be able to get a really good AMD CPU where as now I can just get a decent one.
Then on S754 Ed has said if you have to do an upgrade do to this. Why becuase AMD isn't putting much into this platform and has also said that it was going to start phasing out S754 at the end of Q3 2005. If my $250 DFI Lanparty, and 2800 combo is going to be phased out in 8 months why buy? beyond building a second system becuase its inexpensive. I think most of the people here wan't a platform thats good until dual cores and DDR2 come out in 2006. Maybe I'm wrong there.

On DVD dives point well taken. However I still really don't need to have one before SATA is mainstream becuase it isn't a huge need for me to do Data backup on as I just bought two 80gig HDs for $50. However I think my thoughts on owning a DVD burner are becomeing less and less mainstream. The only other thing is several of Intels 9xx series mobos seem to only have PATA channel and When it comes to changeing something to be more future proof Intel is pretty good at pushing the market along. Finally I think alot of things are still on mobos becuase of tradition. If my USB floppy drive hadn't died I wouldn't be using any of those besides PS2.

Its not that I haven't Heard about ATIs new Chipset its just that I haven't heard anybody besides you excited about it. If its good I would think hard about buying it instead of an NForce4 board

On what gets reviewed Joe reviews what is sen't to him to test. I am sure he would want to test the Hyper6 but he hasn't recieved one yet. So no Hyper6 no review.

On Articles thats cool I would enjoy reading that. Why becuase I would eventually like to go phase-change and I admire the big Lian Li cases. If its rejected for being on an A64 or to extreme let me know and i'll do what I can to help you get it published.

Then thats really neet you hit 3ghz in a winnie there are alot of people that would absolutely love to hit that. I didn't know you did that well on your A64. That probably also means you hit 300mhz FSB so it tells how you know about doing this.

I personally don't have anything against AMD in fact once I have enough money saved I do plan to get a S939 machine, try to hit 300mhz FSB and generally learn alot from doing it. The only problem I have is being able afford to buy parts just looking right now I need atleast $1000(150 mobo 200 CPU 350 vid card 130 PSU 210 ram 120 in water cooling stuff) So yes I really do like A64 but I can't go to it anytime soon do to the upfront cost and once I have purchased all that stuff I don't wan't to find out that I should of waited one month to buy that CPU becuase a much better revision came along.

here here sir, I think we are on the same page. if there is any advice you need on your way to a64, I'm your guy.

Prescott worst CPU ever made by Intel?! This was obviously written by a fanboy seeing as how it outperforms it's older brother, the Northwood while overclocked. Don't agree with that.

Sucka said:

Prescott worst CPU ever made by Intel?! This was obviously written by a fanboy seeing as how it outperforms it's older brother, the Northwood while overclocked. Don't agree with that.

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While I no longer have a distinct hatred for the Prescott processor, I am going to have to agree on this one. Without making any fanboyish comments, allow me to share my thoughts here:

1. First of all, Northwoods were excellent successors to the earlier P4 cores. The 800 Mhz and HT really made these chips stand out from their 400(P4A) Mhz and 533(P4B) Mhz (speaking of fsb) brethen. Not to mention they were quite the overclockers much like the once-famed 1.6. A big issue with Prescotts is that they offered little to no performance incentive over the already-wonderful Northwood cores. While it is true that Prescotts tend to show their wings once they hit over 3.6-3.7 Ghz, the performance differential simply is not enough for it to be called a true "upgrade." As a matter of fact, Prescotts are probably only noteworthy in the sense that their longer pipeline has allowed for overclocks exceeding 4 Ghz.

2. Secondly, we have the dreaded heat issue. Prescotts offered marginal performance increases over similarly-clocked Northwoods, but they were often coupled with enourmous increases in both power consumption and heat output. In many cases, these increases were reported to be approximately 30%. Of course, this is not a huge issue if you use extreme cooling or even mild water, but this is quite alarming given the fact that most overclockers still use air. Besides, many Intel enthusiasts had the pleasure of noting that Intel chips typically ran colder than AMD's offerings. With the emergence of the Prescott, Intel has lost this bragging right. To be fair, I admit that LGA 775 has managed to handle the heat/power issues much better than the older socket 478, but these high temperatures still persist and concern many. And let's not forget the rampant thermal throttling that has been literally built into most Prescott processors. Reviews have noted that this phenomena can occur at a rate of 70-75% of the chips actual rated speed (and this can occur even at stock speeds). Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to actually run a chip at it's rated speed no less than 100% of the time.

3. Third, one must consider the indirect ramnifications of Prescott. Of course, one bad chip does not mean that Intel is a horrible company, as everyone is prone to make mistakes. However, the biggest problem I have with the Prescott is that Intel, the technological behemoth that it is, has the power and resources to rectify the problem, but deliberately chooses not to. Case in point: the Dothan core. Though it was originally designed for the mobile sector, these little chips are not only ridiculously powerful, but they also possess amazingly low power consumption. Had Intel chosen to make these cores the staple of their new LGA 755 interface, they would have won the hearts of manny current nay-sayers, myself included. But they refuse to do so. On the other hand, I can understand this position: If Intel were to abandon the Prescott now, it would essentially label the core an immediate failure and a waste of years of research and development. Hence, Intel has really put itself in a bind here, with no other option but to continue to sell their flawed product and look into other means of addressing key issues (such as BTX, for example). Intel could very easily push the infamous Dothan into the limelight, but such a move would indirectly imply that the Prescott was a mockery and would leave the firm a gaping wound to be picked at by rival AMD. Another little tidbit: aside from labeling Prescott a failure, it would essentially infer that their die shrink is a failure, too. This is because Intel chips actually got hotter after the 90nm process was introduced, whereas AMD chips essentially got slightly colder and used less power. This could, in turn, raise skepticism about Intel's upcoming 65nm die shrink when they move to dual core productions. So you can see here why Intel is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

To sum it up:

1. The Prescott is really a step backwards in terms of design. Not only did it offer little of a performance incentive to upgrade, but it did so at the expense of increased power consumption and heat output. The Northwood was already an excellent chip; instead of improving on the core, they simpled added an extra 1MB of cache, but they also manage to pack twice the amount of transistors in a smaller space (90nm vs 130nm), which lead to the increased temperatures we see today.

2. The heat issues of the Prescott are quite unmanageable for many overclockers. Obviously, this will never be an issue to one with serious water and/or extreme cooling, but many aircoolers out there have been stung by the Prescott and it's volcanic core. And the thermal throttling is not something that can be ignored, either.

3. Intel currently has no other choice but to push Prescott as aggressively as possible, otherwise it can prove quite detrimental to the firm in the near future.

deception``

When will people ever quit calling fanboyism on the frontpage - if you are an actual reader, you would know that Ed is very willing to give and take with both sides of the coin.

<------agree with deception. well put.

here is a link to jsut one of the ATI bullhead mobo reviews. keep in mind this is a reference board, and it already features massive HTT gains over NF4. their NB chip already has support for dual graphics cards as well. when the boards ship, they should be better performing than the reference, and will be followed shortly by dual graphics card boards.

Forgot the link my friend.

forgot the linky
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2269&p=22

I.M.O.G. said:

When will people ever quit calling fanboyism on the frontpage - if you are an actual reader, you would know that Ed is very willing to give and take with both sides of the coin.

Click to expand...

As i said, that statment came off as something a typical fanboy would say, along the lines of "prescott's are hot, and suckij!>!#". Are we not entitled to our own opinions? Why make a post if you don't want to hear feedback? I read most, if not all FP articles, and found that statment a bit off. Sorry for my opinion if it offends you.

Deception, although i am well aware of all the points you make, thanks for sharing them. I have to agree with you on most, if not all of what you wrote, short of them being a step backwards. If you'll notice, .90nm is a step into the future of cores we see today (ie: 775, winney's). It's just a shame Intel didn't manage to get it right the first time around. While it's true that in most applications, the Prescott does not show a noticable difference over Northwood (i have owned both mind you), is it not also the case with Winchester?! Does this to mean they have taken a step back? Being an o/c forum, we must look at it slightly different than the average Joe. Yes it runs hotter and offers little performance over Northwood at default speed for a Dell built system, but when put into the hands of a good overclocker you will see a noticable increase in performance under certain circumstances (ie: while overclocked). This is also true with the winney's, they show better performance when clocked higher, as well as require less volts, and lower temps. Would any of that matter to the average Joe? No. So we must look at it slightly different.

Does this mean i think s478 Prescott is the end all CPU, hell no! But to call it a complete failure, as well as a huge blunder i think is a little unfair. Not only were they able to put out the first mass produced .90nm chip, but put into the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, it was able to break the 6GHz mark for a world record clock speed, a glimpse of what is to come with Intel in the future. Either way, i still disagree the Prescott is the worst P4 proc to date, my p/// was bad, my willy was horrible, and so on. These chips are quite fun for the enthusiest, just makes me wonder if he had owned one....

I agree with most of what Ed thought was a yay and nay, except I think Mobile Bartons should be included as a good thing for 2004. They are simply insane OCers, 30%+ within easy reach, 40% and higher with a bit of nudging. Faster graphics cards are a nice thing, but who can afford a $300-600 card, not to mention upcoming SLI? All we got were nicely priced 9800 Pros as a result.

Prescotts I don't think were worthy of a yay. The continuation of the toaster oven CPU trend is the last thing I want in my case.