Prescott or Northwood??

[grouch]

k, now it's come down between a 3.0C (northwood, 512k) and a 3.0E (prescott, 1mb).
i've heard the northwood is faster than prescott, that prescott gives heat comparable to a amd, but prescott has faster encoding and rendering.

overall, which should i get?? please give me some practical examples of how a northwood would be a better choice than a prescott and vice versa.
given that they are the same price.
thanks.

[eric93se]

I went with Prescott (2.8E). Turns out that northwood is easier to overclock. My motherboard cannot unlock the clock . But I hear that prescotts greater than 3.2 are accessible. Depends on your motherboard, so check forums that support your motherboard.


You didn't say whether or not you wanted to OC the processor. If you don't, then definitly go with prescott. I don't have any overheating issues.


I scarped off the heat sink compound that came with the heat sink, then cleaned off the residue with acetone. Then I used Arctic silver 5 heat sink compound.

[eric93se]

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040517/

[hoxlund]

prescott

used to run the p4c800-e deluxe mobo with a 3.0GHz prescott

[oslik3]

hoxlund,

so...

which one do you like better, now that you have AMD 64 3200+ ? prescott or AMD ?

for purposes of video/audio encoding (no gaming)

thanks !

[hoxlund]

for gaming purposes the amd is faster, better FPS

and for encoding and other cpu intenstive stuff, its very close

until i overclock, then its very noticeable that the amd wins

[oslik3]

thanks for the reply, hoxlund !


i assume your AMD is running somewhat cooler than prescott, or is very close in that dept too ?

[hoxlund]

actually no, my 90nm amd runs idle at 94F with stock heatsink/fan

my intel stock heatsink/fan ran idle at around 125Fish

[grouch]

argh..."we all sold out of northwood's...yes we know it was kinda faster and cooler, but intel said to discontinue...yes we kno it's dumb...sorry"
thanks intel...

thinking of getting either the 3.0 or 3.2 prescott now

"My motherboard cannot unlock the clock . But I hear that prescotts greater than 3.2 are accessible"
by clock, that's FSB i'm assuming?? or is it the mulitplier??
and any oc'ing diff between 3.2 and 3.0?? it's $20 CAD difference.
thanks.

[wiesel]

grouch: not sure if this helps but i found a 3.4GHz Intel Pentium® 4 CPU "Northwood" (800FSB) HT 512k Cache OEM

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... tID=119884

Good luck

[Ankerson]

I own both P4's.

Northwood @ 3.06 GHz

And

Prescott P4 Moble @ 2.8 Ghz (Dell Laptop).

I would say the Prescott is the better CPU, my Laptop keeps up with my Desktop in the benchmarks pretty well indeed.

Both are 533 FBS

The Prescott has 1 mb L2 cache while the Northwood has 512k L2 cache.

Both have Hyper Threading.