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After the successful launch of the Northwood in its various speed grades, Intel finally moves on from the 100 MHz FSB to a quad-pumped 133 MHz FSB utilizing a 533 MHz data rate interface capable of delivering 4.256 GB bandwidth between the CPU and the chipset / memory. The simultaneous launch of PC1066 RDRAM, even though available only in small quantities opens new performance dimensions for Intel's top of the line desktop processor, now available in 2.53GHz clock speed. We have taken the latest P4 processors and compared them against each other on the different platforms and at different memory speeds to find out where the real bottlenecks are in today's high end performance sector.

Once again, Intel is releasing another speed bump of a processor, certainly enough to go crazy about it and write a review that could be compressed into two sentences like: Yes it is faster. Intel has done it again ... and ripped the crown from AMD .... Thanks for reading this. We all have read these sentences in more or less elaborate versions and the length of the review is often just a matter of how much fluff one can justify, tsk, tsk, tsk,

Actually, in this case, the situation is somewhat different, since the release of both the 2.4GHz and the 2.53GHz versions mark the end of the 100 MHz system bus era that has defined the PC platform since 1998. While the rest of the world has embraced the 133 MHz bus speed for quite some time, the P4 was still hobbled with the 100 MHz interface, albeit quad pumped, courtesy of the professional courtesy towards Rambus who were not able to force their licensees, er, Samsung, to ramp up the yields of PC1066 RDRAM. What we are looking at is an interesting example of the dichotomous marketing strategies of Intel, on the one hand, Rambus is no longer relevant on the Intel roadmap, on the other hand, the Mountain View, CA based company still appears to have enough clout to influence major decisions at Intel.

Some members of the ever growing family of Pentium 4 (Northwood) CPUs. Featured are the 2.0A, 2.2, 2.4 (all 100 MHz FSB) 2.4B and 2.53 GHz (133 MHz). The 133 MHz versions are easily recognized by their darker metal heatspreaders.

We need to give credit to Rambus, though, the serial high-speed technology is very interesting and at or above the same performance level of DDR and had it not been to some business practices of Rambus, they might be a much bigger player in the field than they are now. Bottom line is, first there was PC600 RDRAM, then there was PC800 RDRAM to be topped by the recent addition of PC1066 RDRAM and even PC1200 RDRAM that has been demonstrated successfully in form of engineering samples. Apparently, though, it is still somewhat difficult to procure quantities of PC1066 RDRAM and PC1200 RDRAM sounds more like the results of an overclocker's kitchen than something that will be marketable in the near future.

This is pretty much the background storyline for this review. What it all comes down to is that there is a new bus speed for the Pentium4 that increases the overall CPU to system logic bandwidth from 400 Mbps (Mega bit / pin and second) to 533 Mbps or else from 3200 MB/sec to 4256 MB/sec. Considering the bandwidth limitations of the memory bus, that is 1.6 GB/sec with PC800 RDRAM, 3200 MB/sec appear rather abundant, however, keep in mind also that the dual channel RDRAM interface doubles the memory bandwidth and we are looking at a 1:1 ratio in memory to FSB bandwidth. In other words, a dual channel RDRAM interface can saturate the FSB at peak transfer rates and, therefore, the simultaneous increase in memory and FSB bandwidth is directly translated into better overall throughput.

Now, without further ado, let's jump right in and look at what this is all about: performance as shown in form of benchmark scores. What we are interested in for this review is which one of the speed bumps, that is, clock, memory or FSB yields the highest improvements and how DDR compares to PC1066 RDRAM. We will not have AMD vs. Intel though.

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