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By Kelly Lu (kellylu@onepc.net) - July 17, 2001
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In this introductory article, we will outline some basic technical features of the Pentium 4, along with the basic hardware required to set up a Pentium 4 system. If you have not heard about which components are required in order to set up a Pentium 4 system, you might be surprised when reading this article about them, since some of them might seem a little unnecessary. At the center of this little digital world will be, of course, the Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz processor that I mentioned above.
I hope this article will provide you with enough information so that you, too, can, if you feel prompted, set up your own digital world powered by a Pentium 4 processor.
The Pentium 4 was released near the end of 2000 amid much excitement-after all Intel had not release a brand new core since the P6 core was introduced back in 1995. At introductory clock speeds of 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz, it was, and still is, in terms of clock speed, the fastest consumer CPU on the market. A few months later, the 1.7GHz that we're looking at here was released and then, about a week ago, the 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz was released to push the performance even higher.
Now, some of you must be asking why I'm looking at a 1.7GHz when there's a 1.8GHz processor out there. My answer? With the 1.8GHz released, the prices for lower-clocked processors such as the 1.7GHz will be considerably lowered and will be more within the reach of buyers. Thus, the 1.7GHz should provide excellent performance at a considerably lower price than its bigger brother, the 1.8GHz-more bang for the buck.
Already, we begin to see the first advantage that the new P4 core brings. Within a few short months, we've seen the clock speed jump 400MHz from 1.4GHz to 1.8GHz, a feat that took almost 3 decades to overcome before the Pentium 4. As one can see, the Pentium 4 is capable of scaling clock speeds unlike any other consumer CPU on the market and that is its main advantage.
Unfortunately, the new core also has some significant disadvantages. Some of you might be saying to yourself, if the fastest Pentium III available is 1.0GHz and the fastest Pentium 4 is a 1.8GHz, then using the Pentium 4 would give a performance boost of 80%, right? Wrong. In order for Intel to be able to boost clock speed this dramatically, they had to implement some engineering "tricks."
The Pentium 4 is using what Intel calls their "NetBurst" architecture, which is replacing the aging P6 architecture mentioned above. Don't be fooled by the name, however, as the architecture has nothing to do with increasing the speed of the 'net. What it is, however, is a set of technical features that allow the processor to perform better in the long run.
I'm not going to go into detail regarding each of the parts of the NetBurst architecture as it's well beyond the scope of this article, but it's basically comprised of four major features.
The first, Hyper Pipelined Technology, is basically a name for how the Pentium 4 has twice the number of pipeline stages than the Pentium III does, 20 to 10, respectively. By increasing the number of stages, it means that the processor can do less work per clock and, thus, will allow the clock speed to be pushed up. Using this method does allow for higher-clocked processors, but it also means a lot of penalties in terms of performance per clock. The idea behind Hyper Pipelined Technology, therefore, is that, eventually, the higher clocked processors will make up for the performance lost with the longer pipeline.
The second and third features, Rapid Execution Engine and Execution Trace Cache, are, in essence, engineering tricks to make up for some of the performance lost by the Hyper Pipelined Technology.
The fourth and final feature of the NetBurst architecture is in the form of a 400MHz (!!) system bus, compared with only 100 MHz-266MHz that we see with other processors. The Pentium 4 is using an ATGL+ bus, which actually runs at 100MHz, but is quad-pumped, making it effectively 400MHz. This is much like how the Athlon's EV6 bus is double-pumped. I'm not exactly sure how they managed to quad-pump the thing, but it sure is impressive!
I will be coming back to the chipset and bus used for the Pentium 4 later on in another part where we look at the motherboard.
Remember when Intel released their MMX instruction set for the Pentium line of processors? This was still way back when they had those bunny suit guys for their commercials. Anyways, these instructions are actually a form of SIMD extensions, which stand for Single Instruction Multiple Data, and, like the name suggest, are a set of instructions built-into the processor that can be used over and over again very efficiently for different pieces of data. MMX had 57 of these instructions, but, unfortunately, were rarely supported by applications and proved to be quite useless in most cases.
AMD then later released their own set of SIMD instructions with their 3DNow!, which they first introduced into their K6-2 and later in their Athlon. 3DNow!, unlike MMX, which were integer SIMD extensions, are a set of floating point SIMD extensions. As many of you might already know, floating point calculations are used extensively in 3D games and many professional-level applications, so having a performance improvement with these applications is very important.
Intel's version of floating point SIMD extensions, called SSE or Streaming SIMD Extensions, came with their release of the Pentium III. Now, let's recall to the pre-Coppermine Pentium III. Back then, it seemed that the Pentium III was almost identical to its Pentium II sibling, except for the SSE that the former supported. Their implementation of SSE, however, did prove to be useful as many witnessed how the Pentium III had a performance advantage over the Pentium II and Athlon processors with applications and games that supported SSE, such as Quake III: Arena.
The Pentium 4 now includes 144 more instructions than the first incarnation of Intel's SSE. Dubbed SSE2, it should provide even more of a performance boost when it's supported by software. Fortunately, as seen with SSE, it seems that many developers are relatively quick to adapt Intel's SIMD extension instructions as to AMD's 3DNow!.
Now that I've briefed you on some of the technical features of the Pentium 4 processor, it's time to find out the basic hardware needed in order to set up one of these babies.
New CPU
Obviously, the actual CPU is required. As mentioned before, I'll be using the 1.7GHz version of the Pentium 4 for this series. Here's a shot of my processor, beside a Pentium III 1GHz and an AMD Duron 650MHz (all relatively scaled).
Finally, let's zoom in some more and take a peek at the heat dissipater plate. On it, we see the following:
New Motherboard and RAM - Well, not a big surprise
When it comes to a new CPU, and especially when it comes to a complete architectural overhaul in the CPU's core, a new chipset and physical interface is expected.
The first wave of Pentium 4 processors, which include all the ones that are available now and the 1.9GHz and 2.0GHz versions to be released in the future, all use (and will use) a Socket 423 physical interface that looks similar to the Socket 370, but are not physical and electronically compatible. Intel is, however, planning to transition to a new socket later on this year to make room for a newer Pentium 4 built around a newer core, designed much like how the Coppermine was to the Pentium III. Thus, the Socket 423 that is being used by current Pentium 4 processors most likely will have its days numbered.
As for the motherboard's chipset, the only one available for the Pentium 4 at this moment is the i850. While I will be covering the details of this chipset later on in another review, I will mention that this chipset is very much identical to the older i840 that was used with high-end Pentium III setups. Being so, it means that, in order to setup a Pentium 4 system, the new DDR memory that you just bought for your Athlon or Pentium III and your older PC133 memory will not work with the Pentium 4 and, instead, you'll have to pay considerably more money for RDRAM. Not only that, because of the i840 and i850's memory controller design, you'll also going to have to purchase your RDRAM in pairs, much like back in the days of 72-pin SIMM's.
Due to the extremely low prices of SDRAM lately, the price of RDRAM is still about 3-5 times more than the former. Don't be afraid though, since this is a relative comparison; the price of RDRAM now is cheaper than ever before.
Still, I would, personally, like to be able to use my older PC133 SDRAM or some of the newer DDR memory. That's why, in a few months, we're going to be seeing two new chipsets that support both of these types of memory. Despite possible legal problems with Intel and its licensing of the Pentium 4 quad-pumped bus, VIA's P4X266 is slewed for release sometime in Q3 and will be the first chipset to support DDR memory with the Pentium 4. Intel, itself, is also planning to release their i845 SDR chipset, which will bring PC133 SDRAM support for their newest processor as well. An i845 DDR version is also expected to be released later on that will support, you guessed it, DDR memory.
As one can see, the Pentium 4's platform is just starting to get interesting.
New Case and Power Supply - HUH?
Something that kind of caught me off guard when I first looked into setting up a Pentium 4 system was the fact that the new CPU required a new case and power supply. With recent problems with supplying power to ever-faster processors, I can see the reasoning behind this new requirement.
Intel is introducing the ATX 2.03 specification with their Pentium 4 CPU. This specification is very similar to the old ATX specification, such as the positioning of the I/O connector back plates, but also has some important differences. First of all, ATX 2.03 alters the mounting holes on the back plate of the case to accommodate the added pressure of the new heatsink retention mechanism (I will explain on it in a future review). This means that current standard ATX cases likely will not be able to accommodate a Pentium 4 motherboard, unless you're into making your own holes, of course. The second feature of the ATX 2.03 specification is the ATX12V power supply. Basically, an ATX12V power supply is identical to a standard ATX power supply, except for the addition of a separate 12V connector that connects to the motherboard to provide extra power to components in and around the CPU.
Well, that just about wraps up my introductory article on the Road to the Pentium 4. As I went through the basics of the Pentium 4's NetBurst architecture and as I described the necessary components needed for the Pentium 4, one very striking similarity arises: everything is designed for the future. For example, the idea behind the Hyper Pipelined Technology is that, in the future, the higher clock speed will make up for the performance lost by the longer pipeline. Another example is the fact that there are two very much-needed chipsets supporting more mainstream SD and DDR RAM slated for release later this year, further enhancing not only the performance of the Pentium 4 platform, but also, in my opinion, make the Pentium 4 more accepted in the industry as they give the buyer more choices.
In other words, the Pentium 4 is only a new processor and, like all things technological, needs to be refined and matured; SSE2 needs to be implemented by developers; clock speeds needs to be ramped up; the platform needs to be refined.
It is, however, too early in these series of reviews for me to state whether the Pentium 4, as it stands now, is a viable solution for you since there's a lot to of things that I have yet to cover. Coming up in future parts, I will be looking at components needed to build a computer based on the Pentium 4 processor-more specifically, a case, a motherboard and a heatsink, in no particular order-and close by providing you with much-needed benchmark results to give you an idea of how the Pentium 4 performs now and, possibly, how it will perform in the future. I hope that, by looking at the technology behind the processor, the components needed to run the processor and the performance of the processor and components as a whole, I will be able to give you a better look at whether the Pentium 4 is a good choice for you now, or a few months, or even years, down the road.
Be sure to check back here at OnePC.NET in a week or so for part 2...
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