Specifications
In the Lab
We put Intel’s new 3.8GHz Petium 4 570J to the test, and
refresh last month’s scores for the 3.46GHz P4 Extreme
CPU Showdown Revisited
A behind-the-scenes look at Maximum PC testing
CPU Athlon 64 FX-55 Intel Pentium 4 570J Intel Pentium 4 EE Intel Pentium 4 EE
CPU clock
2.6GHz 3.80GHz 3.46GHz 3.46GHz
Frontside bus
Core Speed
800MHz 1067MHz 1067MHz
Chipset
VIA K8T800 Pro Intel 925XE Intel 925XE Intel 925XE
RAM
1GB Corsair DDR400 1GB Corsair DDR2/533 1GB Corsair DDR2/533 1GB Corsair DDR2/533
RAM timings
2-3-3-8 3-3-3-8 4-4-4-12 3-3-3-8
Board
MSI K8T Neo Intel D925XECV2 Intel D925XECV2 Intel D925XECV2
SYSmark 2004 Overall
202**
217
201 204
SYSmark 2004 ICC
235**
253
231 232
SYSmark 2004 OP
173
186
175** 179
Mathematica (seconds)
467.99
595 497 594.7
Quake III Arena “Normal” Four (fps)
509.7
471 477 487.8
Doom III 1.1 “Low Quality” (fps)
114
92.7 93.3 96
3DMark 2001 SE Overall
26904
22905 23710 24240
3DMark03 Overall
13137
12683 12607 12663
3DMark03 CPU
1204
1024 1035 1054
3DMark05 Overall
4438
3959 3917 3915
3DMark05 CPU
5203**
5379
4917 5060
UT2003 FB 6x4 (fps)
353
271 286 290
Premiere Pro (seconds)
622
458
510** 506
Photoshop 7 (seconds)
243
263 268 265
MusicMatch 9 (seconds)
235 232
222
225
HT Photoshop 7 (seconds)
481
391
399** 402
HT MusicMatch (seconds)
302
382 370 375
Sandra RAM (MB/s)
5770** 4833 5440 5780
SETI (minutes)
89.9 94.6 104.8 104.3
Best scores are bolded. **Previous winner
THE SHOWDOWN: In last month’s
Head2Head (December 2004), we watched
as AMD’s 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55 blew the
doors off of Intel’s fastest Pentium 4 Extreme
Edition. While there’s no doubt the Athlon
64 FX-55 is the fastest mutha in town,
we wondered if the lack of CAS Latency 3
RAM hurt the P4’s performance. For this
retest, we obtained a set of Corsair Micro
CL3 DDR2/533 modules and reran our
benchmarks using the identical hardware
from the previous shootout.
To make the contest even more
interesting, we also tossed Intel’s brand-new
3.8GHz Pentium 4 570J chip into the fray.
The 570 is a bin-speed increase over the
3.60GHz P4 560 and uses the same Prescott
core with 1MB of L2. The key difference is
the extra 200MHz, support for Microsoft’s
NX, and an improved power-management
mode that makes it run cooler.
For our Intel tests, we used an Intel
D925XECV2 board, with the only changes
being processor and RAM timings. We
also used the same WD2500JB drive and
clocked the PCI-E GeForce 6800 Ultra card
to the same speeds as the AGP GeForce
6800 Ultra card. The same drivers were
used for all tests.
THE RESULTS: The 3.46GHz P4 picks up
a decent performance boost from the
faster Corsair Micro DDR2 RAM in most
benchmarks. Overall, we saw a 2 to 4
percent increase in performance from
the lower latency RAM; unfortunately it
wasn’t enough to make a difference as
the CPU continues to be thrashed by the
Athlon 64 FX-55.
The new P4 570J leaves all others behind
in the application-intensive SYSmark2004
tests, but is a mixed bag in gaming. In many
tests, it’s actually a little slower than the
3.46GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, which
already lags behind the Athlon 64 FX-55.
In our tests, we also found an odd glitch
in our Mathematica benchmark results that
appears to be a reporting bug. Based on our
observations, it’s likely the P4EE took 597
seconds, not 497 seconds to complete its
run. We base this theory on the retests of
the 3.46, 3.4, and 3.8 P4 processors, none of
which could break the 600 second barrier by
more than a few seconds.
THE UPSHOT: The Athlon 64 FX-55 is
still the champ, but the P4 570J wins in
application testing. Still, until Intel bumps
the Prescott up to the 1066MHz bus and
introduces the 2MB cache version, it looks
like the P4 will be eating Athlon 64 FX dust
for the foreseeable future.
For our Intel tests, we used an Intel
tests, it’s actually a little slower than the
MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 200574