Intel's Pentium 4 2.2GHz. and 2.0AGHz. Processors
"Northwood" Enters The Arena

By, Dave Altavilla
January 7, 2002

 
Here are various test systems we used in our benchmarking, for your reference.
 

HotHardware Test Systems Northwood, Willamette and Athlon XP

Test-Bed 1:

Intel Pentium 4 2GHz. Willamette Processor, 2GHz. Northwood Processor, and 2.2GHz. Northwood Processor

Motherboard and RAM Config #1:
Abit TH7-RAID Motherboard - i850 (No RAID used)

256MB of Samsung PC800 RAMBUS RDRAM

Motherboard and RAM Config #2:

Asus P4B266 Motherboard - i845 DDR

256MB of Corsair PC2400 DDR SDRAM
Other Hardware and Software:

IBM DTLA307030 30Gig ATA100 7200 RPM Hard Drive

Sound Blaster Live Value

Windows XP Professional

Direct X 8.1

GeForce3 Ti500 Graphics Card

nVidia Detonator 4 reference drivers version 21.85

Intel chipset drivers version 3.20

Test-Bed 2:

AMD Athlon XP 1900+
Abit KR7A-RAID (No RAID used)
256MB Corsair PC2400
GeForce3 Ti500 Graphics Card
Sound Blaster Live Value
IBM DTLA307030 30Gig ATA100 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
Direct X 8.1
nVidia Detonator 4 reference drivers version 21.85
Via 4-in-1 4.37 Chipset Drivers
 

 

Benchmarks and Comparisons Sandra and Winstones

We know this next series of tests sort of make the folks at Intel cringe.  While they are a very "synthetic" suite of benchmarks, with only a small indication of real world performance, SiSoftware's Sandra tests are a popular frame of reference with enthusiasts on the net.  These were all performed on the i850 test bed with PC800RDRAM.
 

There are a couple of fairly apparent things to note here in these tests.  First and foremost, there was a significant gain in integer or ALU performance, with the 2GHz. Northwood, versus the 2GHz. Willamette reference score in the CPU tests.  Another somewhat less apparent notable is the fact that the reference Athlon XP1800+ system in these tests, is about on par with a 2.2GHz. Northwood,  from an ALU standpoint.  However, when it comes to Floating Point and Multimedia performance, the 2.2GHz. Northwood shows a sizeable lead.  While this is consistent with some of the results you'll see in our Winstones tests next, we still caution that Sandra is a "light duty" benchmark and more emphasis should be placed on the following real world application tests.

Ziff Davis Media E-Testing Labs Business and Content Creation Winstone Benchmarks are next. 

Update 1/13/02 - New Northwood Scores - Re-Tested

We've shaded in blue, the two systems here that are not Northwood driven, the 2GHz. Willamette and the Athlon XP.  We've also updated our test suite with the all new Content Creation Winstone 2002. 

CC Winstone 2002 uses the following applications in its battery of tests:

• Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1
• Adobe Premiere 6.0
• Macromedia Director 8.5
• Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055
• Netscape Navigator 6/6.01
• Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184)

As the name suggests, Content Creation Winstone 2002 utilizes various web development tools of the trade.  With apps like Windows Media Encoder, Macromedia Director an Sound Forge, this benchmark taxes system bandwidth and the FPU more heavily than the "Desktop Publishing" apps like Microsoft Office, that are run in the Business Winstone test.  Here we see a much closer race than we have in the past, between the Pentium 4 and the Athlon XP.  The Northwood's additional on chip cache has improved overall throughput in business and desktop applications.  However, it still seems that AMD has the edge here, ever so slightly.  Interestingly enough, the i845DDR setup actually bested the i850/RDRAM system, in the Business Winstone tests.

3DMark 2001, Video 2000 MPEG Encoding, and DroneZ