here's something I got from digging around Intel's Technology Journal

Willamette Block diagram


Prescott Block diagram


No Northwood loving, unfortunately. Both diagrams were cut-n-paste from pdf articles available at the link above (prescott on the front page, willie in the archives). Anyway that ought to put to rest the 128 bit wide bus width from L2. So the mystery remains where does the bottleneck lie?

nUtZ`: L2 cache line length is 128 bytes long on all the P4 implementations, apparently, and the L1 D-cache line is also 64 bytes long throughout. You raised a good question about data alignment. L2 is a unified instruction+data whilst L1 is just data, after all, hmm... According to the original Willamette paper, the 128 byte L2 cache line is further divided into two 64-byte sectors, hence L1<->L2 data transactions should be 64-byte aligned.

Not sure if the increasing the L1 set associativity from 4-way to 8-ways has anything to do with the lacklustre performance. I mean, after x mod 4 vs x mod 8 is just a 1-bit difference; one extra shift to the right. one more bit to mask out.

This post has been edited by silkworm: Apr 22 2004, 03:54 PM

for those who are commenting prescott L2 cache bandwith but do not own a prescott, i can confirm here:

Prescott L2 Cache is 256Bits
Prescott have 1MB L2 Cache, Twice as much as Northwood
Prescott L2 Cache have bigger latency, Twice as much as Northwood

Last come to last, precott is not really that bad compare to northwood.

i just got my prescott yesterday,

SuperPI 1M 39second, prescott 2.8E oc at 3.5GHz
SuperPI 1M 43second, nothwood 2.4C oc at 3.3Ghz

but Prescott is really hot, get yourself a water cooling kit before OC it...

They focus more on synthetoc and application benchmarks
Those are where the L2 cache power comes into place

I guess it has been mention few times in the forum that I will surely support future applications and windows. Hopefully it will make things faster with SSL3.

finally i got my fact right about these two..thanks ikan n ayam

got a customers 2.8e system with heat problems in yesterday
idle was at 46, after 3dmark2001SE about 60 degree C

room temperature is at 20 degree C, im just reading from the room thermometer.

after some mods and cable management, idle was at 35. didnt have time to do 3mark2001SE cuz customer needed his system back for work

Go to tomshardware website
Got comparison between Northwood and Prescott at 4Ghz

i dun really trust tomshardware anymore.....
i only believe in 50% of what they say

anyway the prescott seems to perform poorly in gaming..

Let's compare this 2 benchie

Man the Pressie really sux bad
The Northy is better

the prescott is actually very good, only at higher clockspeed... but at lower clockspeed it's hot and slow.
Anyway, tomshardware looks like an INTEL promoter to me...
Their benchmark shows that Prescott is faster than Northwood even at slower speed...

E has heat issues at high speeds, already consume 100W++ at stock 3 Ghz unless you got super cooling ler

So its better to take the C version as it is cooler and one more thing, you planning to get the Nvidia 5600, why not go get a 9600PRO instead??

im using
2.8E (standard hsf)
is7-E Intel i865-ICH5 mobo
GEIL DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 256 MBytes x 2
wd 80Gb

before this....my idle cpu temp ~61 sys temp ~41 pwm 50
overload cpu temp ~79 syt temp 50 pwm 55

after i flash my bios with latest abit flashmenu i got this

idle cpu 51 sys 45 pwm 45
overload 65 sys 45 pwm 50

is it something todo with winbond sensor or bios?

This post has been edited by slainn: May 27 2004, 11:48 AM

haha, the bios is cheating u loh~ ahah, just kidding.

brother, 3.2c is faster than 3.0e lah....

The sensor got some reading problems and u need to flash to the latest v20 BIOS to bring down the temp

The Prescott is better when it comes to overclocking, but for stock the Northwood kicks its butt

the prescott (2.8ghz) im having is now reaching 69degrees!!!

Hahhaa, now only you know ah Ket
Should choose Northwood not Prescott
Get a super cooler ler, necessity for Pressie procs