Intel P4 2.0 GHz

This 2.0 GHz P4 that we’ve reviewed is based on the new Socket 478 and cannot be used on old P4 motherboards with Socket 423. It is not based on the Northwood core that is soon expected; but on the old Willamette core, though it fits in the new socket. (Northwood will be manufactured using a 0.13-micron process and will have twice the amount of L2 cache than the current Willamette core.)

All our testing was done using 128 MB RAM and an Asus V7700 on an Intel D850MD motherboard with an IBM Deskstar 7200 rpm hard drive. As usual, we tested the processor for performance in graphics, gaming, and regular and high-end productivity applications. These were compared against the earlier P4 1.7 GHz and the AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz. We also used a synthetic benchmark for testing the processor’s capabilities using 3DWinbench 2000 processor test. Here, the 2 GHz scored higher with a score of 3.15 compared to 2.92 of the Thunderbird and 2.79 of the 1.7 GHz. For gaming performance, we used Quake III Arena. As always, the P4 scored higher at 230 fps compared to Athlon’s 194 fps, and the earlier P4’s 220 fps.

We also ran Business Winstone (BW) and Content Creation Winstone (CCW) 2001, which run regular and high-end productivity applications respectively. Here, the Athlon was ahead by a very small margin in both benchmarks. However, you do need to keep in mind that processors of this caliber are not bought to specifically run productivity applications, which is exactly what BW does. And in CCW, which runs higher-end applications like Adobe Photoshop, Director 8 and DreamWeaver, the difference is a mere 4 percent, which will translate into hardly anything for an end user. Compared to an existing 1.7 GHz P4 also, there are healthy increases in all benchmarks, but the price difference between the two is so huge that it makes the 1.7GHz a far better deal.

Now the question of who requires this 2.0 GHz P4 processor. Those days are long gone when menial tasks like word processing would eat up precious computer resources and slow down your system. Nowadays, even an entry-level 700 MHz Celeron processor is more than enough to satisfy such productivity needs. Even games have become more video card dependent as they quickly exhaust their memory bandwidth. And as is the case with most latest processors, this one too has an obscenely high price tag of Rs 25,000–more than double that of the existing 1.7 GHz P4. In such a scenario, it is difficult to justify the high cost of a 2 GHz processor, except for those who are involved in CAD/CAM, multimedia creation, animation, and maybe even high-end gaming.

Anuj Jain