Intel Pentium 4 641 (Cedar Mill) - 65-nm process technology advancing
Introduction
Keeping the computer "at the cutting edge of progress" is a
very hard and definitely not cheap thing, especially in our rapidly
developing world. No sooner had the situation with graphic adapters
stabilized than new cataclysms came up, which resulted in global
changes on the processor front. The announcement of new AMD AM2
platform has not indeed made serious trouble, it hasn't brought
anything radical to the world, but quite little time has left before
the official announcement of Intel Conroe. That is why most people are
not hasty at buying a new processor - everybody is in the hiding and
waiting. This calm before the storm is urged especially by regular news
of the latest Conroe tests and that AMD is in for a trouble. In this
situation, AMD representatives keep calm and cool and are not showing
any signs of apprehension.
The outcome of this intrigue will come soon, but for now in
the calm period new single-core Intel processors came in quietly to the
Russian market which are supposed to be a replacement for the "oldies"
based on the Prescott core. I mean the processors built on the Cedar
Mill core. This core is not new - we've known it for a long time and we
came across that in dual-core Intel Pentium D processors. The Cedar
Mill core is half the Presler core which is produced following the
0.065-mk process technology and underlies the dual-core Intel Pentium D series 9ő0
processors. In other words, I mean single-core Intel processors created
following the 0.065 mk process technology.
Although Conroe is not far off already, in will arrive in
Russia in no less than 2 months; besides, we are definitely in for
sheer profiteering with "hot" novelties. But what if we need a new
processor right now? After the drop of prices in April, Intel's
dual-core processors have turned just a little bit more expensive than
single-core, but for now it is hard to see the advantages of dual-core
processors, and a processor like that requires a powerful PSU and good
cooling. But there is another side of the coin - when overclocking
Presler processors it is a rare occasion to get over the 4 GHz bar, and
in so doing a very high heat emission has to be cooled. What if we
remove one core out of the Presler? Of course, the frequency potentials
of the processor should be much higher and the heat emission quite
moderate. This is just the way the single-core Intel Pentium 4 (Cedar
Mill) appears to be.
In fact, the Cedar Mill core was announced quite a long time
ago, but for unknown reasons processors on its base have appeared in
the Russian retail quite recently. Somehow or other, we are getting
familiarized with them closer today.
The 0.065 mk process technology and a single core
We should point out the following straight off: The new core
Cedar Mill does not offer improved performance as compared to the
customary Prescott 2M, but on the other hand, the new "fine" process
technology gives certain hopes for reduced power consumption and heat
emission.
So, we have clarified that Cedar Mill is merely a half of the
dual-core Presler, is produced following the 0.065 mk process
technology like the Prescott 2M core, offers 2 MB of L2 cache size, and
the 800 MHz system bus. Basically, all the specifications of Prescott
2M can be extended to Cedar Mill as well. As is usual, the marking has
been incremented by one digit: Intel Pentium 4 630 -> Intel
Pentium 4 631. It is just the "1" at the end of the name that points to
the 0.065 mk Cedar Mill core. Intel have repeatedly mentioned
processors whose name ends with «3» which will
offer support for the Vanderpool Technology; the company even sent out
specimens of these processors for tests, but currently they can't be
made available either on sale or in Intel's product lists. Our search
of information on this subject has brought interesting results: there
have been found only 2 processors with support for the Vanderpool
Technology, and their marking ends with "2" but not "3". Besides, these
processors have not yet been fully sent to the retail - only a few
shops offer them in their price lists, so we can't yet judge about
their prices.
We suggest that you look at the table of processors whose
existence and availability in the retail is authentic.
|
Processor name
|
Core
speed
|
System
bus
speed
|
Cache memory
size
|
Core
|
Average price
in Moscow *
|
|
Pentium 4,631
|
3000 MHz
|
800
|
2 MB
|
Cedar Mill
|
190 $
|
|
Pentium 4,641
|
3200 MHz
|
800
|
2 MB
|
Cedar Mill
|
220 $
|
|
Pentium 4,651
|
3400 MHz
|
800
|
2 MB
|
Cedar Mill
|
280 $
|
|
Pentium 4 661
|
3600 MHz
|
800
|
2 MB
|
Cedar Mill
|
430 $
|
|
Celeron D 352
|
3200
|
533
|
512 K
|
Cedar Mill-V
|
85** $
|
|
Celeron D 356
|
3330
|
533
|
512 K
|
Cedar Mill-V
|
90** $
|
* Prices are as per www.price.ru dated 27 June 2006.
** Prices are shown based on preliminary info.
As you can see, Intel Pentium 4 (Cedar Mill) processors are
available for sale in Moscow at clock speeds up to 3.6 GHz. Pentium 4
662 and 672 offer support for the Vanderpool Technology (VT), but they
haven't yet appeared on the market, especially Russian.
Haven't the latter two processors in this table attracted your
attention? Who would doubt of that? These are nothing more than Intel
Celeron created following the 65-nm process technology. But the most
important thing which catches the eye is the doubled cache memory size
- it now amounts to 512 K. No doubt, that will essentially improve
their performance.
Evidently, Intel has done something to Celeron which is
different from Pentium 4, and the new core Cedar Mill-V is used only in
top-end processors of the Intel Celeron product line. There is also
information on the third Celeron processor built on the Cedar Mill-V
core which will be marked as Intel Celeron 360 and run at 3.46 GHz, but
its release is planned for the middle of the summer.
Now let's explain one more most interesting point. Which
chipsets support processors built on the Cedar Mill(-V) core? It is
hard to answer this question clearly, so the thing is not about the
chipset. It is most likely about the motherboard. To make a motherboard
support Cedar Mill processors, the power scheme should conform to the
VRM 10 standard. This is the standard all the boards aimed at Intel
dual-core processors (chipsets i945, i955, i965, i975) conform to.
To avoid mishmash in the matters of support, Intel has
introduced a special scheme of marking that points to the compatibility
of platforms. It is called the «Platform Compatibility
Guide» (PCG) and is designated on the processor's box and
should also be shown in the specification of the motherboard.
On the processor's box, this mark can be found on the front
sticker, under the hologram:
Below, under the «Platform Compatibility
Guide» label there is the marking «05Ŕ»
which is just the factor of platform support. In the motherboard's
specification, this factor is normally shown in the "Supported
processors" section. For example, here are the extracts from the
Instructions on ASUS P5LD2 (i945P) motherboard:
P5LD2 specification summary
|
CPU
|
LGA 775 socket for Intel® Pentium® 4
Processor
Compatible with Intel® PCG
05B/05A and 04B/04A
and the latest Intel® Smithfield dual-core
processor
Support Intel® Enhanced Memory 64Technology
(EM64T)
Support Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology
(EIST)
Support for Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology
|
The required line is highlighted in the bold type. If this
line shows only «PCG 04B/04A», then your
motherboard can's support processors built on the Cedar Mill core.
Unfortunately, not all manufacturers find it necessary to show the
factor of platform compatibility - for example, we couldn't find this
mark on Gigabyte's and Foxconn's motherboards. There is one thing we
can state with confidence – all motherboards with support for
Intel dual-core processors fall within the PCG 05B/05A category, so we
can use that as a guideline.
We can also add that most motherboards built on the nForce 4
SLI Intel Edition chipset which also support dual-core Intel processors
conform to the PCG 05B/05A compatibility factor.
If your motherboard (conforming to PCG 05B/05A) is not yet
able detecting the new Cedar Mill core, simply update the BIOS with the
most recent version.
Intel Pentium 4 641
We received an Intel Pentium 4 641 processor in our test lab
for evaluation; this model runs at 3200 MHz (200ő16) and offers 2 MB
cache, so we'll be comparing it versus the younger brother Intel
Pentium 4 640 based on the "good old" Prescott 2M.
Of course, new processors are packaged into boxes with the
modified «Intel» logo.
The inscription «Intel EM64T» on the box
has been removed because this technology is already supported by all
Intel processors, so it makes no sense reminding of that.
The interior of the repainted box has remained the same: the
processor and its cooler are packaged in a plastic corset. The cooler
has a copper core, which is definitely nice.
It seems like Intel is anyway trying to take care of the
acoustic properties of its products – despite the reduced
heat emission of the new processor, it is equipped with an effective
cooler, which means it won't have to wound up to the full, torturing
the ears of the users.
To the left – Intel Pentium
640, to the right – Intel Pentium 641
There aren't any changes on the heat-spreading lid - the
differences are only in the marking, but the changes on the "belly" of
the processor are seen even to the naked eye.
To the left – Intel Pentium
640, to the right – Intel Pentium 641
For Intel Pentium 641, a greater number of finer external
components has been used. Don't mind the color of the textolyte - this
difference is most likely related to the origin of processors: the
Intel Pentium 640 arrived to us from China, and Intel Pentium 641 from
Malaysia.
We proceeded with further examination of the processors with
information utilities. This is what can be found out about the Intel
Pentium 4 640 with the known utility Everest 2006:
The processor has the Prescott 2M core of revision N0, supply
voltage 1.3 V and falls within the typical 84W heat package.
This is what the programs tells about Intel Pentium 4 641:
This is Intel Pentium 4 641 based on the Cedar Mill core of
earlier revision Â1 - surprisingly, its multiplier's minimum value is
12 and not 14 like in Prescott 2M, which means the processor is able
reducing the clock speed to 2400 MHz in the power-saving mode.
The chip area has gone down substantially: from 135 mm2 in
Prescott 2M to 81 mm2 in Cedar Mill. The supply voltage has also
slightly gone down – 1.275 V versus 1.3 V in Prescott 2M. All
these changes are supposed to reduce the heat emission and provide a
higher clock speed.
Despite the reduced minimum multiplier, the EIST (Enhanced
Intel SpeedStep Technology) wouldn't work at all like other concomitant
power-saving technologies - Enhanced HALT State, and Thermal Monitor 2.
This is explained by the earliest revision «Â1» in
which support for these technologies was not brought to perfection. The
next revision «C1» has already been released and
soon will be available to us. Recently, Intel has been increasingly
"playing tricks" with releasing processors with "raw" revisions, but
let's hope this is a temporary problem caused by the war against AMD.
By the way, revision «Ń1» promises to bring not
only support for power-saving technologies but also an improved clock
speed margin.
Everest 2006 did not display information on the typical heat
package, but using other utilities we were able to find out that the
processor fits within the 86W heat package. At first glance, it is a
bit surprising that the "colder" processor offers the TDP greater by 2
W, but it turned out that all Intel Pentium 4 (Cedar Mill) processors
up to 3600 MHz (Intel Pentium 4 661) fit within this heat package.
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