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| Intel's ExtremeEdition P4 955 A giant leap for Intel (process technology) | |
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(Review by MS, December 27, 2005) |
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AMD Athlon 64 X2-3800+ (Manchester) |
A New Reference Board: Intel's "Bad Axe"
As of recent, Intel's platforms have changed approximately every 3 - 4 months, starting with the 925X to XE transition, followed a few months later by the 955 chipset and its plebejan 945 counterpart. Milestones along this evolution were the LGA775 processor interface with a high-end version to enable the 1066 MHz host bus interface, subsequently, a step back to 800 MHz with Dual core AND HyperThreading support along with the scaled down version lacking the HyperThreading part but providing integrated graphics. All goodies combined, that is:
Click image for larger photograph
As usual for Intel's high-end boards, the Bad Axe (D975XBX) is clad in an all-black soldermask but, somewhat atypical for Intel, there is a bunch of flash and dance especially around the voltage regulator module. Briefly, the new design comprises a five-phase power supply with passive cooling provided for the MOSFETs. Centerpiece of the VRM is the AnalogDevices ADP3189 controller in QFP packaging that drives five AD 3418 driver chips to interface with the actual power transistors. Compared to the usual 3-phase designs, this is a definite step up but it also raised our first suspicions about how much power the new "Presler" P4-955 would actually draw.
Along these lines, it is probably worth taking a brief glance at the CPU coolers supplied with the reference kits. The first iteration was the really tall one with the big fan on top. Next came the medium size cooler that worked marginally but at least in the 500 series caused the CPUs to default into thermal throttling as soon as load was applied. The latest generation is even smaller, with the 840 ExtremeEdition, this cooler was not sufficient to keep die temperatures below the assertion point of the ProcHOT signal. For all practical purposes, we used the largest cooler throughout the testing, after all, it is up to the user how much cooling they will want and at a roughly $1,000.- price point for the CPU, spending another $20-40 on some real cooler should not be cost prohibitive.
Otherwise, the "Bad Axe" board is nothing out of the ordinary, featuring the ICH7R with its Matrix RAID capabilities, backed up by an on-board Silicon Image SiI 3114R controller for additional storage hook-up options. One detail to further point out is the presence of coolers on both MCH and ICH.
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Pentium 4 820D (dual core) |
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