Pentium Extreme Edition 955

Intel's move to their 65nm process has gone extremely well.  We've had 65nm Presler, Cedar Mill and Yonah samples for the past couple of months now and they have been just as good as final, shipping silicon.  Just a couple of months ago we previewed Intel's 65nm Pentium 4 and showcased their reduction in power consumption as well as took an early look at overclocking potential of the chips. 

Intel tried to minimize the negative effects of Prescott as much as possible through technologies like their Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST).  However, at the end of the day, the fastest Athlon 64 consumed less power under full load than the slowest Prescott at idle .  Considering that most PCs actually spend the majority of their time idling, this was truly a letdown from Intel. 

With 65nm, the architecture of the chips won't change at all - in fact, the single-core 65nm Pentium 4s based on the Cedar Mill core will be identical to the current Pentium 4 600 series that we have today (with the inclusion of Intel's Virtualization Technology).  So with no architectural changes, the power consumption at 65nm should be lower than at 90nm.  As we found in our first article on Intel's 65nm chips, power consumption did indeed go down quite a bit; however, it's still not low enough to be better than AMD.  It will take Conroe before Intel can offer a desktop processor with lower power consumption than AMD's 90nm Athlon 64 line. 

In an odd move, just before the end of 2005, Intel is introducing their first 65nm processor.  Not the Cedar Mill based Pentium 4 and not even the Presler based Pentium D, but rather the Presler based Pentium Extreme Edition 955. 

The Presler core is Intel's dual-core 65nm successor to Smithfield, which as you will remember was Intel's first dual-core processor.  Presler does actually offer one architectural improvement over Smithfield and that is the use of a 2MB L2 cache per core, up from 1MB per core in Smithfield.  Other than that, Presler is pretty much a die-shrunk version of Smithfield. 

With 2MB cache on each core, the transistor count of Presler has gone up a bit.  While Smithfield weighed in at a whopping 230M transistors, Presler is now up to 376M.  The move to 65nm has actually made the chip smaller at 162 mm 2 , down from 206 mm 2 .   With a smaller die size, Presler is actually cheaper for Intel to make than Smithfield, despite having twice the cache.  Equally impressive is that Cedar Mill, the single core version, measures in at a meager 81 mm 2 .

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual-Core Processor

The time of dual-core processors has come.  The CPUs equipped with two computational physical cores will start their invasion into desktop PCs in the near future. By the end of next year most new computers should be already equipped with dual-core processors.

The developers have been working hard on introducing dual-core architectures for a reason: all other means of growing the processor performance have already been exhausted. The clock frequencies cannot be increased that easily any more, and the higher bus frequency as well as larger cache size do not provide the expected efficient result. At the same time the improvement of 90nm production technology has finally reached the point when the manufacturing of super-large 200sq.mm dies turned profitable. This is exactly the reason why processor manufacturers began to integrate dual-core architectures into our life so actively.

The dual-core processor family from AMD is called Athlon 64 X2. This name reflects not only the fact that the new dual-core solutions are based on AMD64 architecture, but also the fact that they are designed with two physical cores inside them.

Athlon 64 X2 processor family will include four CPUs by the time it hits the stores. These will be 4200+, 4400+, 4600+ and 4800+. Their price will range from $500 to $1000 depending on the performance level. In other words, AMD positions its Athlon 64 X2 processor family a little bit higher than the regular Athlon 64 CPUs.

Centrino: born to run

From the start, notebook vendors have raced to speed up their notebooks but almost always at the expense of battery life: faster processors meant limited time away from an outlet. Thankfully, times change. Rather than throwing more megahertz at computing tasks, Intel's new Pentium M processor, which makes its long-awaited debut today, significantly increases notebook battery life.

Sound like a dream come true? Consider that the Pentium M is like no other processor. Based on a 0.13-micron design, the chip has an astounding 77 million transistors, many of which are taken up by the chip's megabyte of cache for the most-used instructions and data. This chip's real boost comes from its ability to predict what the next task will be and start on it or shut itself down between clock cycles to save power. As a result, it not only handles tasks more efficiently, it also uses less power.

Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu 92mm CPU Cooler

The 7000B-Cu is a slightly improved version of the 7000A-Cu. The 7000B not only performs a bit better, but the weight has been reduced by 18 grams. This may not seem like a big difference, but with this heatsink already over Intel's recommended weight limit, it couldn't hurt. I will talk about the weight a little more later on.

The fan used in the Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu measures 92mm in diameter and has a standard 3-pin connector on it. The heatsink also comes with Zalman's ‘Fan Mate 2' fan speed controller so you can adjust the speed of the unit to achieve your own balance of noise/cooling effectiveness. The Fan Mate unit adds a bit of extra cable mess for you to take care of, but should be small enough to hide easily.

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