Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition September 24, 2003 Brandon Bell & Chris Angelini

Introduction

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Normally when you’re a company the size of Intel, secrets are very hard to keep. Motherboard manufacturers and your customers must be given the latest details on your upcoming plans, no matter how sensitive. After all, what’s the point of releasing a cutting-edge processor if an OEM such as Dell doesn’t know to plan a marketing blitz for its launch, or a company like ASUS doesn’t have motherboards available to house it?

As a result, Intel is forced to supply its processor roadmap to all of its partners, and when parts are available, guess who gets them first? You guessed it – the manufacturers. During this process, information leaks can occur, and before Intel knows it, their next generation processor has made the front page of Slashdot.

That’s why Intel’s announcement of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition took everyone by surprise. There were no leaks or secret demonstrations to the media; first word of this processor came straight from Intel on their terms without any outside interference. We guess they wanted to congratulate AMD on its Athlon 64 launch personally.

Just what makes the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition so special? The answer is simple, its massive L3 cache! Intel takes a Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor with its 800MHz front-side bus and mates it to 2MB of Level Three cache operating at the same 3.2GHz as the processor’s core. When combined with the processor’s 512K L2 cache, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition boasts over 2.5MB of onboard memory. This kind of storage isn’t uncommon in servers and even some workstations, but it’s unheard of in a desktop processor, as integrating 2MB of memory doesn’t come cheap. In the case of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, transistor count triples.

Because of this, the Extreme Edition will be a limited edition part. Intel has not committed to any long term plans for this product, so for all we know this could be limited to just one processor at 3.2GHz. Personally, we think an entire line of Extreme Edition processors ranging from 2.6GHz all the way up to 3.2GHz is just what the doctor ordered, but for now Intel is taking a wait-and-see approach. If the market accepts it, future variants could become available.

Official pricing has not been announced yet, and this processor won’t be available until sometime around November. Those of you with 875P or 865PE motherboards will be glad to know that the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is a drop-in replacement, meaning it will work in your current motherboard perfectly.



SIDEBAR: The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is targeted directly at gamers.

System Setup

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System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 (2.2GHz)
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition (Hyper-Threading Enabled)
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (Hyper-Threading Enabled)

ASUS SK8N nForce3 Professional 150
ABIT IC7-MAX3 875P

1GB Registered DDR400 (Athlon 64 FX)
1GB Corsair DDR3500 CAS2 (Pentium 4)

NVIDIA Reference GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB
Detonator Driver 45.23

2x Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000RPM SATA HDD (RAID 0)

Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition

DirectX 9.0b

Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra MAX3
3D Mark03 v330
Comanche 4 Benchmark Demo
PC Magazine Business Winstone 2002
Quake III: Arena version 1.32 ‘fscrusher’ demo
Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo

Desktop resolution 1024x768, 32-bit color, 75Hz refresh


SIDEBAR: The Extreme Edition may require a BIOS update for some motherboards, be sure to check out your motherboard manufacturer’s webpage for updates.

SiSoft Sandra MAX3

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SiSoft Sandra MAX3 – Synthetic

SIDEBAR: The Extreme Edition will hit system vendors first, then retail.

3DMark 03

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3DMark03 – DirectX 9.0b

Notes

While 3DMark 03 is more of a video-related test, we do see a slight performance increase between the Pentium 4 and the Extreme Edition processor. When the graphics duties are handled by the CPU (as seen in 3DMark’s CPU test), we see a much larger gap – 10%. But the Athlon FX bests Intel’s flagship by nearly the same margin.


SIDEBAR: FutureMark recently published new guidelines regarding driver optimizations.

Comanche 4

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Comanche 4 – DirectX 8

Notes

Comanche 4 is a fairly CPU-intensive benchmark that has traditionally favored the Pentium 4 platform, but as you can see the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and Athlon 64 FX-51 run neck-and-neck in this benchmark. The L3 cache nets the P4 Extreme Edition an additional 11% in performance at 800x600x32.


SIDEBAR: This will probably be one of the last times we use Comanche 4 as a benchmark.

Business Winstone 2002

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PC Magazine Business Winstone 2002

Notes

Even with the 2MB L3 cache, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition still trails the Athlon 64 FX-51 in Business Winstone 2002 testing. Office applications have never been the Pentium 4’s strong suit which is definitely reflected in this test, the Athlon FX processor holds a comfortable 8% performance advantage.


SIDEBAR: The Extreme Edition processor operates at 1.55V

Quake III: Arena

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Quake III: Arena v1.32 ‘fscrusher’ Demo – OpenGL

Notes

The Athlon 64 FX-51 is able overtake the Pentium 4 3.2GHz in Quake 3, but not the Extreme Edition model. Its additional cache nets it a performance boost of 9% at 800x600, which is just enough to hold off the Athlon 64 FX-51: the processors are separated by under five percentage points.


SIDEBAR: Check out the dual R350 card from Sapphire in Chris’ Computex report!

Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo

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Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby – DirectX 8

Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch – DirectX 8

Notes

The Athlon 64 FX-51 finishes ahead of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition in Unreal Tournament 2003’s flyby and botmatch tests. The botmatch results are the most important, as they simulate real-world gameplay. In that case the Athlon 64 FX holds a 12% advantage.


SIDEBAR: While AMD was busy celebrating Athlon 64’s launch, Intel was busy bringing Hyper-Threading to notebooks.

Conclusion

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The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is a definite improvement over the Pentium 4 3.2GHz, but other than a good showing in Quake 3, it is outperformed by the Athlon 64 FX-51 in the games we tested with. Keep in mind that this is only a small subset of the games we normally use for testing, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles still haven’t been tested, and they’re definitely more CPU intensive than games like Quake 3. The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition also has one intangible benefit which we still haven’t discussed: Hyper-Threading Technology.

Hyper-Threading will play an increasingly larger role over time as more software is designed to take advantage of it. In the meantime, it’s a nice luxury to have if you’re into multitasking.

The real beauty of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition however is that it’s designed to work with today’s existing Pentium 4 infrastructure. You don’t need to purchase a new motherboard or memory, unlike the Athlon 64 FX-51.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until November if you’re enticed by the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, which likely won’t come cheap. Intel hasn’t released official pricing information for the Extreme Edition processor, preferring to wait until OEMs start shipping systems. It’s also unclear if Intel intends to stick with the Extreme Edition line for very long. Right now they only have plans for the 3.2GHz model we’re discussing today. AMD on the other hand plans to release faster Athlon 64 FX processors for the foreseeable future.

As enthusiasts, we’d love to see Intel support future iterations of the product, especially if they can bring the price point to $500 or less with slower models, but we’ve been given no indication that this is where Intel is heading. With “Prescott” Pentium processors right around the corner, Intel has certainly got their hands full with projects right now. If Intel does intend to continue to compete in the extreme high-end of the desktop space, they’ve got their work cut out for them. As it stands now, the Athlon 64 FX-51 appears to be the faster processor for gaming.


SIDEBAR: Should AMD be worried about the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition or will it slowly fade away? Its fate ultimately rests in the hands of you, the consumer. Cast your vote on this processor in the news comments!