Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ Search Prices:

LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Willy, Woody and Scotty Coolers R'Us Enhanced Power Management Specs and Names testConfiguration NX vs. DX Memory Bandwidth Latencies WorldBench5 -1 WorldBench5 -2 3dsmax More 3D Rendering Cinebench2003 Gaming FutureMarks Conclusions Give Us Some Feedback on this Review
Intel Pentium4 600 Series
(Review by MS February 21, 2005)

The Numbering Convention

In the early days of the P4, numbering was straightforward, there was a P4 and a speed grade based on the real clock frequency of the processor. The monikers A,B,C and so on described different host bus frequencies and all of that was still straightforward. The makeover to the LGA775 format changed things a bit since there are now the 500 series with the 570J and its J-less 560, counting down to 520 brethren. And the ExtrmeEdition. Prescott 2.0 uses a 6xx naming convention without the J moniker for the 670 since that one does not exist yet and maybe never will. And the ExtremeEdition. Power numbers are down from the 500 series but still high enough to make a search light develop an inferiority complex.

They all look alike, don't they? Not really, the Galatin-based ExtremeEditions are easily identified since they don't lie flat on any surface, rather they are tilted to one side (top row), courtesy of one rather large decoupling capacitor at the bottom surface, whereas the Prescott-based CPUs (shown are the 660 and ExtremeEdition 3.73) lie perfectly flat on the surface. Suffice it to say that it is stille easier to mark the CPUs with a pencil for proper CPUID.

From the Intel power specifications we have a few numbers:

The one thing that jumps out from the table is the fact that other than the 660, all lower speed grades feature the same thermal design power of 84W. It is not exactly clear how these numbers were derived. Moreover, the same data sheet contains information regarding the maximum amperage drawn by the different speed grades and lists 78A for the PRB=0 units and 119A for the PRB=1 units. Exact power calculations are somewhat difficult because of the dynamic voltage regulation implemented on the 600 series, however, it is fair to assume that under full load, the max VCC of 1.4V will be supplied. According to Ohms law, this would put the total power consumption of an ExtremeEdition to 166.6 W - reason enough to believe that there is a typo somewhere in the collateral supplied.

Update: After exchanging some emails with Intel over the past few days, this is what we were able to figure out: The numbers above refer to the thermal design power, that is, the requirements on the cooling equipment that need to be met by the OEMs for using a given CPU. The Amperage listed refers to the requirements on the CPU's Voltage Regulator Module in order to meet the highest possible power draw of the processor that, according to Intel sources cannot be reached with any conventional software. In theory, the amperage could be drawn, however, the actual power in Watt would still not be a linear function according to Ohm's law since with increasing Amperes, the voltage drops. At 119 A current, the voltage will drop 0.174V below that specified by the VID, in the case of a 1.40V CPU, that will result in 1.26V. The resulting max power draw would, therefore, be only 150W and not as we originally thought 167W. Keep in mind, though, that these conditions cannot be reached in real life, rather, they are design and test specifications used for binning and rating of the individual dies before packaging.

All CPUs require a minimum junction temperature of 5 degrees celsius, at least according to the specifications, although we know that they will operate at much lower temperatures under Xtreme conditions. On the other hand, the TCC activation temperature varies with the power draw from 65 centigrades to 70 degrees.

next page: => Test Configurations =>