You guys are only evaluating the performance, I think it's not that important, the features yes, those are important. The P4 is crap even with hyper-x,y,z, so it wasn't a "chipset" that was going to make a miracle.
I would like to see the new platform tested, IGP, Sound system, EMT64 (is it enable on LGA775 processors?), NX bit?, new power saving techniques, so new features up to test.
At least the DDR vs DDR2 comparison is a good thing. I was hopping that DD2 would give a performance boast, since the P4 architecture relies on higher bandwidth and higher latency (the pros of RDRAM i850), but I guess not....
AMD does not really need dual ch. memory. Look at the diff. between a socket 939 and 754, it is very little for most apps. Also Dual Ch memory is not new. It was used WAY back in the day.
The only reason it is back is because intel can't design a decent CPU so they have to make up for it with pricey and unneeded tech.
Anti overclocking designs in the new chipsets? Very poor choice.
I will reiterate Intel performance per $ over its previous generations is pathetic. More $ required per degree of performance and the increase over last year is poor.
AMD is expensive until you get to the 754 - but perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought the industry had left single channel memory configurations behind 2 years ago. Oh wait, it's AMD, that's about their catchup period, sorry. So yes look at AMD in dual channel AMD64 chips and yes they are very pricey. So much for their argument that by providing competition they keep prices down.
Add to all that the overclocking unfriendly stuff, and while AMD comes out as better overall, the performance per $ is still not markedly better than last year, imo.
Yeah, I guess we might have to offer AMD a few of our (cash in the bank) billions to buy them out. I wonder if the FTC will allow that? Hmmmmm. Let's investigate.
I am with #4 and #16, it is OK to leave the Northwood, but this is not apples to apples if you did not use two Prescotts to compare the boards to get a percentage difference in the architecture. The 'weak' areas almost match up to a Prescott vs Northwood comparison. It does not tell anything. Sorry Wesley, but the conclusion is flawed on a direct comparison.
Am i missing something or is intel not as familiar with there own products as ATI...ie just read about ATI's chipset optimized for prescott and its faster than northwood which is a change from most benchmark comparisons on other boards ... http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2...
Combined with the fact that they gonna start putting all this new tech on BTX format, Intel is really trying hard to completely remove itself from the DIY market. And although your average computer buyer doesn't even know what an AMD processor is, you can bet that OEM's are too happy about being asked to either a) swallow the cost of these upgrades or b) raise prices and lose customers, and this might make them eye AMD as a way to shore up the bottom line. Being a trendsetter is one thing but bringing in DDRII when it's slower and PCI-E when it offers practically no benefit isn't exactly blazing a trail that I want to follow...
from what i've read on ddr2 it won't start make a big performance difference unless its clocked almost twice the speed as the ddr1 your compairing it to due to the fact all ddr2 is is 2 ddr1 chips dual channeld run thru a buffer. so when your running at 400mhz ddr2 the latency is the same as ddr200 due to the speed the chips are running at not the external frequency.
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"
I agree socket 939 is way overpriced, especially for the underdog AMD who has an opporunity to make real enroads into the market with Intel down right now... but the rest of this is untrue. Socket 754 3200+ is the same price and P4 3.2 and they split the benchmarks. I'd argue for gamers the A64 3200+ is underpriced. Then intels performance is just fine unless you call 5-10% differences here and there signifigant. I don't and i doubt you'd even notice without charts to prove it.
"AMD performs great till you give it too much to do at once, and they won't fix that till they bring in dual core."
Every processor is like this, Hyper-Threading doesn't save any Intel chip from this same thing. Benchmarks like Winstone, etc are benchmarking with multitasking in mind.
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"
lol, it's ironic, but I'm glad AMD is where they are. They certainly aren't the same company there were 8 years ago.
This is a real shake up to me. I mean this is no small change that Intel wants everyone to do. And for what? The only thing that comes to mind is "just so I can say I did it". Makes no sense at all for me. Intel shouldn't have put this out until they could show it was really worth it. I don't see it in any kind of way. And with all this, they STILL can't beat AMD (in gaming anyway). This looks more like a power grab than anything else, another way to make more money for Intel. I'm not one bit impressed or interested.
Thank you Anand for giving us the real deal on these new things. I'd love to say different, but AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic, and their prices, most especially when you consider the insane cost of DDR2, are no better.
"in 2005 we'll be better" Yeah right. AMD performs great till you give it too much to do at once, and they won't fix that till they bring in dual core. And if you think they'll manage that in 2005... yeah right on that too. AMD will be lucky to even SEE production chips on 90nm in 2005.
Don't think Intel has some great recovery coming either. The 925/915 release and the costs that they want to charge for chips that don't perform, is ludicrous. Yeah they multitask, but they can't do anything much better than systems could a year ago. Dual core might be coming, but it seems clear they have to change a lot of things to do it so why even create the 9XX chipset? This thing is going the way of the 820, from day 1.
If I'm not paying $800 for a chip that DOES perform, what on earth makes Intel thing I'm goign to spend $700 for the new 3.6 or worse $850-1000 for a chip that can barely keep up with that $800 chip? I know what makes you think that, arrogance. It's not desperation yet, but that's what it's going to become soon.
I'm disappointed in all sides of this. But I'm grateful Anand put it in a clear and honest light.
I agree with the comment toward the end of the article regarding Intel's ability to make things fall into place. Remember how disappointing the first itterations of the P4 were...Remember how dismal Prescott's performance was when first released? 2 years ago I bought a cutting edge system only to watch intel up the FSB from 400 to 533 to 800mhz, introduce 875/ICH5R and see SATA mature into the better hard drive option (see Anantech's Q2 hard drive round up), all within about a year. So I am glad to see Intel introducing a range of features all at once instead of changing the socket, then adding a new chipset a little later then a few months later revising the southbridge and so on. For those of us who do not have limitless upgrade budgets it is painful to see new features and chipsets added on what seems like a monthly basis.
Of course I'm still planning on making the switch to A64 in the very near future.
The funniest part of all of this benchmarking is that you STILL cannot buy a 3.4g prescott on pricewatch for any chipset (4.5 months after launch). People bickering about using the FX53 (launched earlier this month and widely available NOW) for comparison purposes should do a quick reality check and know that the Anandtech guys tried to show Intel in the best light they could... Raid for 925X vs. mid range seagate for AMD, wrong timing on AMD memory (wasn't it AT who said 2-2-2-10 was best performance), etc.
Good review overall as usual for AT; looking forward to the upcoming, more indepth comparison.
The new chipset appears to be faster, but the CPU and DDR II appear to be a bit slower, so in the end it preety much evens out, with one BIG difference: PRICE.
It is now very obvious why AMD is in no hurry to go PCIe or DDR II, but once this picks up AMD will have to play catch up again. Not great, but probably better than having to be the one to break the ice.
Today also seems to be the birth of the new naming scheme, and the 5 that prescott has gotten tells me we will be seing something more potent with the 7 in the name. That is in fact the point of these new names, since prescotts will get higher frequences, but not much more performance.
I'm much more excited about those CPUs than prescotts, which were DOA anyway. Franky I'm surprised it's doing as good as it is.
So if you dont't have performance to sell, what do you do? You sell features, which are the only good thing that this new chipsets brings for early adopters, with the notable exception of a single IDE, but as Gigabyte has shown, that is really not the problem. They just added an extra chip for that, just like it was with SATA in the early days, only now the roles are reversed.
Prescott might have been designed with 4-5 GHz in mind, but it's already dissipating 115 watts at 3.6 GHz. The Pentium 4's of yesteryear at least had potential for good scaling. Prescott has fallen flat on its ass as far as scaling is concerned.
When I think about it, this review isn't so much of a reflection of the awfulness of the 900 series chipsests as a reflection of the mediocrity of the Prescott Pentium 4.
Well, while it is certainly disappointing to see that Intel's "hardware revolution" doesn't really do much at all, but I can't help but think about AMD two years back, when the AMD XP line was getting trounced by Intel's Northwood line. This sort of thing happens to companies, and I think that it's unfair to immediately say: "Intel is losing it."
I think the biggest thing to remember about Intel is that they've always been convinced that clock speed is the way to go. That's why they're pushing this new standard so heavily: not because they think it will perform better at current speeds, but because they can push all of the speeds so much farther. (This was essentially the same thing that they did with the launch of the P4, and I'd say that ended up being all right.)
PCI Express allows for SO much more bandwidth that it would be silly not to adopt it, DDR2 can be pushed a hell of a lot farther than DDR1, and we already know that the Prescott was designed with 4 and 5 GHz models in mind. Is Intel's approach the right one? Maybe, and maybe not, and they certainly don't have the right to try and flip the industry on its head with so little immediate performance gains. But, they did it before with the P4, and after two years it became the clear dominator of the market, until AMD finally got the A64 out the door. So, while I totally agree that there's no need to upgrade now, that's no reason not to be excited for the future: look how far the P4 came, and look where it started.
#26 - The Gigabyte board adds 2 additional IDE channels with a GigaRAID controller, plus it also has the single IDE channel provided by the chipset. The new chipsets only support one IDE channel, but manufacturers can add in other chips if they choose.
#22 & #23 - This will all make more sense when Derek's companion piece is posted later today, which compares the 3.6, 3.4EE, and AMD chipsets.
There is no 3.6EE, and we considered comparing the 3.4EE, but the early benches showed the 3.6 to be a fairer comparison. The 3.6 is the only new Intel chip and the top (3.4EE is just a new 775 package launch) and the FX53 is the top AMD chip. The FX53 runs at the same speed as the 3800+ (2.4GHz) but has twice the cache, and both are Dual-Channel Socket 939. The FX55 will not be released until late this year.
Comparing last year's 3200+, the first Socket 754 Athlon 64 and single-channel, to the just-released 560 (3.6GHz) compares nothing.
If the chipset supports only one IDE channel, why does the Gigabyte board have two green IDE sockets. Am I missing something? I really wanna know, because only one IDE means I dont buy this stuff.
That's just it, though, the FX-53 is just a few tens of dollars more than the 3800+, so some people figure why not? AMD is overcharging because they know they can get away with it..
One interesting thing is the difference it makes which AMD chip people compare the 3.6E to in these reviews. Before coming here I read the one at http://www.bit-tech.net/review/326/ and came away thoroughly impressed. The clincher was that they compared to the A64 3200+ whereas this review compared to the FX-53. I'm not totally sure if the 3.6E _should_ be compared to the FX-53, being as it is marketed as a '560', in the 5xx 'mid-range' desktop segment for Intel. A better comparison for the high-price-end might be 3.4/3.46EE vs. FX-53 or '720' vs. FX-55 later on. I'd think 3.6E vs. A64 3700+, or even better the 3500+ (as it's on AMD's new socket too) would be an informative comparison. It's just a shame Intel's high-end offerings are a bit thin on the ground right now.
Good review. I wish you had compared the 875 with the 925x however both using a Presscott CPU. With one using a Northwood and one using a Presscott fails to show which chipset optimizes the power of the CPU. The fact that you didn't further inphasises that Intel is in one hellava drought. The 3.2 Northwood/875 combo that came out like 8+ months ago is still faster than ANYTHING they have released.
I am waiting for a reason to upgrade but this sure isn't something I was looking for. With Intel having these troubles, AMD is going to take their sweet time putting out anything faster.
It would be great to see the 915 with Skt478- best of both worlds. I know that Skt775 is appearing on 865 mobos (Abit AS8). At that last Taiwan computer expo they had dual intel Sckt mobos but were they 915s?
#16 - I disagree with you. I think Northwood on 875 is exactly the right comparison to Prescott 775 on 925X. Both at the same speed as done in the review. Prescott was not designed for 875, so comparing the best last generation 875/Northwood to the new 925X/Prescott is extremely fair. I'm sure Intel would have preferred a comparison of Prescott to Prescott, because they would have looked better. I think that was #4's point, which you apparently missed.
The three big "must upgrades", DDR2, BTX, and PCIe will offer little to no reason for people to switch over. This is one of those rare times where I say go ahead and spend. There really isnt anything much better on the immediate horizon. Get a nice high end P4 or A64 setup with the nicest vid card you can find and enjoy. All the new tech is useless.
On the 925/915 itself, the high quality audio, upped integrated graphics, and 4 SATA ports are all good things for sure. Im waiting to see how the audio and graphics perform. Could be a future super-platform for low end computers.
I'm sure Intel won't like this review, but it exactly the reason I keep coming back to Anandtech to see what's really going on in computers. Thanks for asking the hard questions, and reporting the answers honestly!
You just saved me a lot of disappointment on my next upgrade - which will now be an Athlon 64.
Not to mention the fact that with practically no performance differences, Intel is trying to change the whole hardware industry. It is very hard to keep up with technologies these days, but it's annoying when the performance gains are minimal.
1. AMD is better in performance wise than Intel's new chipsets and LGA775 processor, however, the difference is not that big.
2. There isn't a much difference between PCIe and AGP graphics cards (even though it is not tested yet), but one would suspect the performance difference to be rather minimal.
3. 875P chipset is better than Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets.
4. DDR "I" is better than DDR II.
Basically, all the new technologies have failed as far as the performance results are concerned. People should now go with AMD64 systems. If you still want to stay with Intel, it is better to predict that a good high-end 875P system will still be better for another 6 months, if not more. Secondly, people shouldn't jump on the new hardware as soon as it comes out. Wait for the new technologies to mature. And if you really want to jump bandwagon of new technologies, purchase a board that supports both DDR2 and DDR memory modules, choose DDR modules and save some money as DDR 2 modules are heavily priced. However, you will have to jump the PCIe graphics bandwagon, but I guess you win some and lose some.
Is it me or is Intel not holding up that well this year? Maybe this is a bad year for them. Research reports show that Intel will remain at the top but AMD will gain more market shares this year, which is expected.
Did I missed something or am I pretty much on the right ball?
the thing that i was most dissapointed in, is the fact that intel feels they need to shaft non sata users by only providing one pata channel. Intel's anti consumer attitude "you'll upgrade when we tell you to" with constantly changing sockets, crippled chipsets (remember how 815 only supported 512 megs ram when the older 440bx did 2 gigs of ram in an attempt to force people to the extremely expensive (and slow) P4 platform at the time), will only force more and more of the white box and DIY market to amd.
This article has let me down completely. I have been looking forward to this new technology for my new system build. To see the benchmarks and the virtual lack of performance gains has hit me like a bullet.
A novice computer builder hears "3.6ghz, PCI-E, DDR2, ICH6" and goes insane with happiness.
I beg the question, has Intel lost its mojo? Trying to redfine the computer world by exhibiting hardware that barely exceeds the preceeding hardware? What is a man to do?
I should admit, I am a hyper-threading fanatic. But Since A64 beat Intel in everything, I guess "hyper-transport" is what I'll settle with.
Well this has just confirmed my plan for an athlon 64 next - I can't see any reason to be looking towards intel, either now or in the near future (next 6 months).
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57 Comments
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nserra - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
You guys are only evaluating the performance, I think it's not that important, the features yes, those are important. The P4 is crap even with hyper-x,y,z, so it wasn't a "chipset" that was going to make a miracle.I would like to see the new platform tested, IGP, Sound system, EMT64 (is it enable on LGA775 processors?), NX bit?, new power saving techniques, so new features up to test.
At least the DDR vs DDR2 comparison is a good thing.
I was hopping that DD2 would give a performance boast, since the P4 architecture relies on higher bandwidth and higher latency (the pros of RDRAM i850), but I guess not....
Bozo Galora - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
yes he's sureRyanVM - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
#54, Are you sure you aren't thinking of the S754/S939 dual socket mobo?tfranzese - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
#53, yes, there's a board that was shown at Computex that had both sockets giving the option to use one or the other.RyanVM - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
So, any chance that the 915 chipset can be tied to a socket 478 + Northwood? :DMarlin1975 - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
AMD does not really need dual ch. memory. Look at the diff. between a socket 939 and 754, it is very little for most apps. Also Dual Ch memory is not new. It was used WAY back in the day.The only reason it is back is because intel can't design a decent CPU so they have to make up for it with pricey and unneeded tech.
tfranzese - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
Anemone, there's really little reason you need dual-channel memory on the AMD64 platform with the memory controller being on the chip.Anemone - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
Anti overclocking designs in the new chipsets? Very poor choice.I will reiterate Intel performance per $ over its previous generations is pathetic. More $ required per degree of performance and the increase over last year is poor.
AMD is expensive until you get to the 754 - but perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought the industry had left single channel memory configurations behind 2 years ago. Oh wait, it's AMD, that's about their catchup period, sorry. So yes look at AMD in dual channel AMD64 chips and yes they are very pricey. So much for their argument that by providing competition they keep prices down.
Add to all that the overclocking unfriendly stuff, and while AMD comes out as better overall, the performance per $ is still not markedly better than last year, imo.
:)
Bozo Galora - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
"My My We are in trouble now arent we..."Yeah, I guess we might have to offer AMD a few of our (cash in the bank) billions to buy them out. I wonder if the FTC will allow that? Hmmmmm. Let's investigate.
firtol88 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
My My we are in trouble now aren't we...Looks like AMD is the clear choice, unless you need a heater.
gsellis - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
I am with #4 and #16, it is OK to leave the Northwood, but this is not apples to apples if you did not use two Prescotts to compare the boards to get a percentage difference in the architecture. The 'weak' areas almost match up to a Prescott vs Northwood comparison. It does not tell anything. Sorry Wesley, but the conclusion is flawed on a direct comparison.Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
and notice the alderwood gigabyte only has the single red intel IDE, no greenieshttp://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/i...
Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Tom's says new Intel chipsets are O/C locked - tied to PLLhttp://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040619_1103...
Kahless - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Am i missing something or is intel not as familiar with there own products as ATI...ie just read about ATI's chipset optimized for prescott and its faster than northwood which is a change from most benchmark comparisons on other boards ...http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2...
ZobarStyl - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Combined with the fact that they gonna start putting all this new tech on BTX format, Intel is really trying hard to completely remove itself from the DIY market. And although your average computer buyer doesn't even know what an AMD processor is, you can bet that OEM's are too happy about being asked to either a) swallow the cost of these upgrades or b) raise prices and lose customers, and this might make them eye AMD as a way to shore up the bottom line. Being a trendsetter is one thing but bringing in DDRII when it's slower and PCI-E when it offers practically no benefit isn't exactly blazing a trail that I want to follow...JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"I can honestly say that is the FIRST time I have ever read that phrase.
Falloutboy525 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
from what i've read on ddr2 it won't start make a big performance difference unless its clocked almost twice the speed as the ddr1 your compairing it to due to the fact all ddr2 is is 2 ddr1 chips dual channeld run thru a buffer. so when your running at 400mhz ddr2 the latency is the same as ddr200 due to the speed the chips are running at not the external frequency.Marlin1975 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey"WTF?
You can get a Athlon64 chip for less then $199 now and there is a sempron 3100+ socket 754 chip that has a MSRP of only $124
AMD hsa the best bang for the buck if you want low/mid end (atlon XP) or even mid/high end (Athlon 64/fx)
I went from a 800Mhz FSB HT P4 to a Athlon64 and and glad I did.
Zebo - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"I agree socket 939 is way overpriced, especially for the underdog AMD who has an opporunity to make real enroads into the market with Intel down right now... but the rest of this is untrue. Socket 754 3200+ is the same price and P4 3.2 and they split the benchmarks. I'd argue for gamers the A64 3200+ is underpriced. Then intels performance is just fine unless you call 5-10% differences here and there signifigant. I don't and i doubt you'd even notice without charts to prove it.
tfranzese - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD performs great till you give it too much to do at once, and they won't fix that till they bring in dual core."Every processor is like this, Hyper-Threading doesn't save any Intel chip from this same thing. Benchmarks like Winstone, etc are benchmarking with multitasking in mind.
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"
lol, it's ironic, but I'm glad AMD is where they are. They certainly aren't the same company there were 8 years ago.
Mike89 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
This is a real shake up to me. I mean this is no small change that Intel wants everyone to do. And for what? The only thing that comes to mind is "just so I can say I did it". Makes no sense at all for me. Intel shouldn't have put this out until they could show it was really worth it. I don't see it in any kind of way. And with all this, they STILL can't beat AMD (in gaming anyway). This looks more like a power grab than anything else, another way to make more money for Intel. I'm not one bit impressed or interested.Anemone - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Thank you Anand for giving us the real deal on these new things. I'd love to say different, but AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic, and their prices, most especially when you consider the insane cost of DDR2, are no better."in 2005 we'll be better" Yeah right. AMD performs great till you give it too much to do at once, and they won't fix that till they bring in dual core. And if you think they'll manage that in 2005... yeah right on that too. AMD will be lucky to even SEE production chips on 90nm in 2005.
Don't think Intel has some great recovery coming either. The 925/915 release and the costs that they want to charge for chips that don't perform, is ludicrous. Yeah they multitask, but they can't do anything much better than systems could a year ago. Dual core might be coming, but it seems clear they have to change a lot of things to do it so why even create the 9XX chipset? This thing is going the way of the 820, from day 1.
If I'm not paying $800 for a chip that DOES perform, what on earth makes Intel thing I'm goign to spend $700 for the new 3.6 or worse $850-1000 for a chip that can barely keep up with that $800 chip? I know what makes you think that, arrogance. It's not desperation yet, but that's what it's going to become soon.
I'm disappointed in all sides of this. But I'm grateful Anand put it in a clear and honest light.
mostlyprudent - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
I agree with the comment toward the end of the article regarding Intel's ability to make things fall into place. Remember how disappointing the first itterations of the P4 were...Remember how dismal Prescott's performance was when first released? 2 years ago I bought a cutting edge system only to watch intel up the FSB from 400 to 533 to 800mhz, introduce 875/ICH5R and see SATA mature into the better hard drive option (see Anantech's Q2 hard drive round up), all within about a year. So I am glad to see Intel introducing a range of features all at once instead of changing the socket, then adding a new chipset a little later then a few months later revising the southbridge and so on. For those of us who do not have limitless upgrade budgets it is painful to see new features and chipsets added on what seems like a monthly basis.Of course I'm still planning on making the switch to A64 in the very near future.
SLIM - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
The funniest part of all of this benchmarking is that you STILL cannot buy a 3.4g prescott on pricewatch for any chipset (4.5 months after launch). People bickering about using the FX53 (launched earlier this month and widely available NOW) for comparison purposes should do a quick reality check and know that the Anandtech guys tried to show Intel in the best light they could... Raid for 925X vs. mid range seagate for AMD, wrong timing on AMD memory (wasn't it AT who said 2-2-2-10 was best performance), etc.Good review overall as usual for AT; looking forward to the upcoming, more indepth comparison.
AtaStrumf - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
The new chipset appears to be faster, but the CPU and DDR II appear to be a bit slower, so in the end it preety much evens out, with one BIG difference: PRICE.It is now very obvious why AMD is in no hurry to go PCIe or DDR II, but once this picks up AMD will have to play catch up again. Not great, but probably better than having to be the one to break the ice.
Today also seems to be the birth of the new naming scheme, and the 5 that prescott has gotten tells me we will be seing something more potent with the 7 in the name. That is in fact the point of these new names, since prescotts will get higher frequences, but not much more performance.
I'm much more excited about those CPUs than prescotts, which were DOA anyway. Franky I'm surprised it's doing as good as it is.
So if you dont't have performance to sell, what do you do? You sell features, which are the only good thing that this new chipsets brings for early adopters, with the notable exception of a single IDE, but as Gigabyte has shown, that is really not the problem. They just added an extra chip for that, just like it was with SATA in the early days, only now the roles are reversed.
Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
thanx for quick reply and clearing that up wesley. you da man - I remember you from abxzone.Always thourough and focused - just like a Benihana chef.
Pandaren - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
29 - TrueWisdomPrescott might have been designed with 4-5 GHz in mind, but it's already dissipating 115 watts at 3.6 GHz. The Pentium 4's of yesteryear at least had potential for good scaling. Prescott has fallen flat on its ass as far as scaling is concerned.
When I think about it, this review isn't so much of a reflection of the awfulness of the 900 series chipsests as a reflection of the mediocrity of the Prescott Pentium 4.
tart666 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
woo-hooo, NCQ for the masses! that alone is worth the upgrade...TrueWisdom - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Well, while it is certainly disappointing to see that Intel's "hardware revolution" doesn't really do much at all, but I can't help but think about AMD two years back, when the AMD XP line was getting trounced by Intel's Northwood line. This sort of thing happens to companies, and I think that it's unfair to immediately say: "Intel is losing it."I think the biggest thing to remember about Intel is that they've always been convinced that clock speed is the way to go. That's why they're pushing this new standard so heavily: not because they think it will perform better at current speeds, but because they can push all of the speeds so much farther. (This was essentially the same thing that they did with the launch of the P4, and I'd say that ended up being all right.)
PCI Express allows for SO much more bandwidth that it would be silly not to adopt it, DDR2 can be pushed a hell of a lot farther than DDR1, and we already know that the Prescott was designed with 4 and 5 GHz models in mind. Is Intel's approach the right one? Maybe, and maybe not, and they certainly don't have the right to try and flip the industry on its head with so little immediate performance gains. But, they did it before with the P4, and after two years it became the clear dominator of the market, until AMD finally got the A64 out the door. So, while I totally agree that there's no need to upgrade now, that's no reason not to be excited for the future: look how far the P4 came, and look where it started.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
#26 - The Gigabyte board adds 2 additional IDE channels with a GigaRAID controller, plus it also has the single IDE channel provided by the chipset. The new chipsets only support one IDE channel, but manufacturers can add in other chips if they choose.Wesley Fink - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
#22 & #23 - This will all make more sense when Derek's companion piece is posted later today, which compares the 3.6, 3.4EE, and AMD chipsets.There is no 3.6EE, and we considered comparing the 3.4EE, but the early benches showed the 3.6 to be a fairer comparison. The 3.6 is the only new Intel chip and the top (3.4EE is just a new 775 package launch) and the FX53 is the top AMD chip. The FX53 runs at the same speed as the 3800+ (2.4GHz) but has twice the cache, and both are Dual-Channel Socket 939. The FX55 will not be released until late this year.
Comparing last year's 3200+, the first Socket 754 Athlon 64 and single-channel, to the just-released 560 (3.6GHz) compares nothing.
Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
If the chipset supports only one IDE channel, why does the Gigabyte board have two green IDE sockets.Am I missing something?
I really wanna know, because only one IDE means I dont buy this stuff.
shabby - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
So when are the dual core cpu's coming out? Think ill wait for those.SDA - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
That's just it, though, the FX-53 is just a few tens of dollars more than the 3800+, so some people figure why not? AMD is overcharging because they know they can get away with it..stephenbrooks - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Maybe replace '3500+' by '3800+' above.stephenbrooks - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
One interesting thing is the difference it makes which AMD chip people compare the 3.6E to in these reviews. Before coming here I read the one at http://www.bit-tech.net/review/326/ and came away thoroughly impressed. The clincher was that they compared to the A64 3200+ whereas this review compared to the FX-53.I'm not totally sure if the 3.6E _should_ be compared to the FX-53, being as it is marketed as a '560', in the 5xx 'mid-range' desktop segment for Intel. A better comparison for the high-price-end might be 3.4/3.46EE vs. FX-53 or '720' vs. FX-55 later on.
I'd think 3.6E vs. A64 3700+, or even better the 3500+ (as it's on AMD's new socket too) would be an informative comparison. It's just a shame Intel's high-end offerings are a bit thin on the ground right now.
Staples - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Good review. I wish you had compared the 875 with the 925x however both using a Presscott CPU. With one using a Northwood and one using a Presscott fails to show which chipset optimizes the power of the CPU. The fact that you didn't further inphasises that Intel is in one hellava drought. The 3.2 Northwood/875 combo that came out like 8+ months ago is still faster than ANYTHING they have released.I am waiting for a reason to upgrade but this sure isn't something I was looking for. With Intel having these troubles, AMD is going to take their sweet time putting out anything faster.
Pumpkinierre - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
It would be great to see the 915 with Skt478- best of both worlds. I know that Skt775 is appearing on 865 mobos (Abit AS8). At that last Taiwan computer expo they had dual intel Sckt mobos but were they 915s?rjm55 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
#16 - I disagree with you. I think Northwood on 875 is exactly the right comparison to Prescott 775 on 925X. Both at the same speed as done in the review. Prescott was not designed for 875, so comparing the best last generation 875/Northwood to the new 925X/Prescott is extremely fair. I'm sure Intel would have preferred a comparison of Prescott to Prescott, because they would have looked better. I think that was #4's point, which you apparently missed.Doormat - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Now I dont feel so bad about buying that P4-3.0C/i875 combo last month...Cygni - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
The three big "must upgrades", DDR2, BTX, and PCIe will offer little to no reason for people to switch over. This is one of those rare times where I say go ahead and spend. There really isnt anything much better on the immediate horizon. Get a nice high end P4 or A64 setup with the nicest vid card you can find and enjoy. All the new tech is useless.On the 925/915 itself, the high quality audio, upped integrated graphics, and 4 SATA ports are all good things for sure. Im waiting to see how the audio and graphics perform. Could be a future super-platform for low end computers.
JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
#4You're probably right.
Would have been a much fairer comparison had they used the same CPU.
A Northwood on 875
vs a
Prescott on 925
hardly compares the chipsets.
A prescott on 875
vs a
Prescott on 925
probably would have been a bit more objective.
JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Is that a typo on page 19?Second graph
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2...
rjm55 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
I'm sure Intel won't like this review, but it exactly the reason I keep coming back to Anandtech to see what's really going on in computers. Thanks for asking the hard questions, and reporting the answers honestly!You just saved me a lot of disappointment on my next upgrade - which will now be an Athlon 64.
thatsright - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
#8, GhandiInstinctDude!!! You need to get out a bit more man!
overclockingoodness - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Not to mention the fact that with practically no performance differences, Intel is trying to change the whole hardware industry. It is very hard to keep up with technologies these days, but it's annoying when the performance gains are minimal.overclockingoodness - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
So let's see what we have here...1. AMD is better in performance wise than Intel's new chipsets and LGA775 processor, however, the difference is not that big.
2. There isn't a much difference between PCIe and AGP graphics cards (even though it is not tested yet), but one would suspect the performance difference to be rather minimal.
3. 875P chipset is better than Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets.
4. DDR "I" is better than DDR II.
Basically, all the new technologies have failed as far as the performance results are concerned. People should now go with AMD64 systems. If you still want to stay with Intel, it is better to predict that a good high-end 875P system will still be better for another 6 months, if not more. Secondly, people shouldn't jump on the new hardware as soon as it comes out. Wait for the new technologies to mature. And if you really want to jump bandwagon of new technologies, purchase a board that supports both DDR2 and DDR memory modules, choose DDR modules and save some money as DDR 2 modules are heavily priced. However, you will have to jump the PCIe graphics bandwagon, but I guess you win some and lose some.
Is it me or is Intel not holding up that well this year? Maybe this is a bad year for them. Research reports show that Intel will remain at the top but AMD will gain more market shares this year, which is expected.
Did I missed something or am I pretty much on the right ball?
overclockingoodness - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
medfly - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
the thing that i was most dissapointed in, is the fact that intel feels they need to shaft non sata users by only providing one pata channel. Intel's anti consumer attitude "you'll upgrade when we tell you to" with constantly changing sockets, crippled chipsets (remember how 815 only supported 512 megs ram when the older 440bx did 2 gigs of ram in an attempt to force people to the extremely expensive (and slow) P4 platform at the time), will only force more and more of the white box and DIY market to amd.GhandiInstinct - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
This article has let me down completely. I have been looking forward to this new technology for my new system build. To see the benchmarks and the virtual lack of performance gains has hit me like a bullet.A novice computer builder hears "3.6ghz, PCI-E, DDR2, ICH6" and goes insane with happiness.
I beg the question, has Intel lost its mojo? Trying to redfine the computer world by exhibiting hardware that barely exceeds the preceeding hardware? What is a man to do?
I should admit, I am a hyper-threading fanatic. But Since A64 beat Intel in everything, I guess "hyper-transport" is what I'll settle with.
The message is clear, my life is over....
Neekotin - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
guess i'll be keeping my system for another 1 year.. hehehe ;). just gonna buy me a new GPU!Degrador - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Well this has just confirmed my plan for an athlon 64 next - I can't see any reason to be looking towards intel, either now or in the near future (next 6 months).WileCoyote - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
baby steps...mkruer - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Actually now that I think of Intel might be correct. The chipset may be up to 15% faster, its just that Prescott is up to 15% slower.wicktron - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
zzzzzzmkruer - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
The moral of this story, buy AMD instead.Falloutboy525 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
now it makes sence as to why amd isn't even bothering wth ddr2 till it speeds up