64 bit Prescott

[Dan Irwin]

hi,

I'm thinking of buying the a high end 478 MoBo with a Prescott CPU. I
have been debating weather or not i will get a good balance of
longevity and power out of it, because it is not 64 bit like the
athlon64s are. A bit after thinking about this i heard that later
Intel will add 64 bit to Prescott. Now the question i am posed with is
will these chips work with the current boards? Because i don't know
the answer to this question i am now posing it to you.

thx for your help,

dan

 

[Rob Stow]

hi,

I'm thinking of buying the a high end 478 MoBo with a Prescott CPU. I
have been debating weather or not i will get a good balance of
longevity and power out of it, because it is not 64 bit like the
athlon64s are. A bit after thinking about this i heard that later
Intel will add 64 bit to Prescott. Now the question i am posed with is
will these chips work with the current boards? Because i don't know
the answer to this question i am now posing it to you.

thx for your help,

dan

No, the eventual "64 bit" Prescotts will not work with the
current socket 478 boards. Socket 775 is what you will
need.

Forget about the supposed "longevity" aspect of 64 bittedness.
You don't sound like someone who would benefit from 64 bits,
so just get the best 32 bit cpu you can - and the clear winner
for most users is the Athlon64 for desktops or the Opteron for
workstations and servers.

 

[George Macdonald]

hi,

I'm thinking of buying the a high end 478 MoBo with a Prescott CPU. I
have been debating weather or not i will get a good balance of
longevity and power out of it, because it is not 64 bit like the
athlon64s are. A bit after thinking about this i heard that later
Intel will add 64 bit to Prescott. Now the question i am posed with is
will these chips work with the current boards? Because i don't know
the answer to this question i am now posing it to you.

If you mean a current i865 or i875 chipset mbrd, no they will not allow

32-bit addresses with a 64-bit Prescott. Those chipsets only cater for

32-bit addresses on the FSB so the mbrds are not designed to use the upper
4 address bits. When 64-bit Prescott arrives the CPU socket on the mbrd
will be LG775 anyway and things could get very messy here - I expect to see
LG775 mbrds which *still* do not support the 64-bit Prescotts... when they
arrive.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[Ed]

If you mean a current i865 or i875 chipset mbrd, no they will not allow
32-bit addresses on the FSB so the mbrds are not designed to use the upper
4 address bits. When 64-bit Prescott arrives the CPU socket on the mbrd
will be LG775 anyway and things could get very messy here - I expect to see
LG775 mbrds which *still* do not support the 64-bit Prescotts... when they
arrive.

Don't worry Intel will change the socket, they always do. ;p
LG778 anyone?

 

[Black Jack]

I'm thinking of buying the a high end 478 MoBo with a Prescott CPU. I
have been debating weather or not i will get a good balance of
longevity and power out of it, because it is not 64 bit like the
athlon64s are. A bit after thinking about this i heard that later
Intel will add 64 bit to Prescott. Now the question i am posed with is
will these chips work with the current boards? Because i don't know
the answer to this question i am now posing it to you.

Well, as others have pointed out this is the end of the line for
Socket 478 Pentium 4, the next jump is to Socket 775. The 64-bit
features won't be available _at_least_ until then. Note that this
doesn't mean that as soon as Socket 775 arrives, then that 64-bit
Pentium 4 will too. The first generation of S775 P4 will still be
32-bit only.

I'm not sure why Intel is waiting so long to introduce the 64-bit
features. I think Intel may feel that it's not completely compatible
with AMD yet. It's widely believed that Intel took some first draft
AMD documents and reverse-engineered based on those preliminary
standards, but AMD made some changes to the standards in the final
drafts which may have caught Intel off-guard. Intel is in an
unfamiliar location now. Until now, it drove all of the standards on
this architecture, and therefore it was upto others to follow its
standards. I don't think Intel is too familiar with following someone
else's lead.

Yousuf Khan

 

[George Macdonald]

Well, as others have pointed out this is the end of the line for
Socket 478 Pentium 4, the next jump is to Socket 775. The 64-bit
features won't be available _at_least_ until then. Note that this
doesn't mean that as soon as Socket 775 arrives, then that 64-bit
Pentium 4 will too. The first generation of S775 P4 will still be
32-bit only.

No reason that I see that the current socket couldn't be used for the
extended addresses - the pins are there on the CPU package... up to 36-bit
at least and in theory could work with a E7505 chipset. This is really a
chipset issue with the indirect effect of mbrd traces.

I'm not sure why Intel is waiting so long to introduce the 64-bit
features.

As already hinted I think there's a chipset mess brewing. If
Grantsdale/Alderwood have the extended addressing included or not, either
way, it's going to make it umm, awkward to segment the market, as Intel is
fond of doing. What *would* they do with Celeron then?

This is part of the elegance, both technical and marketing-wise, of the AMD
approach - all the market layer tweaking is on a single CPU package and
there are no real issues with mbrd compatibility.

I think Intel may feel that it's not completely compatible
with AMD yet. It's widely believed that Intel took some first draft
AMD documents and reverse-engineered based on those preliminary
standards, but AMD made some changes to the standards in the final
drafts which may have caught Intel off-guard. Intel is in an
unfamiliar location now. Until now, it drove all of the standards on
this architecture, and therefore it was upto others to follow its
standards. I don't think Intel is too familiar with following someone
else's lead.

Uh-huh this is all very unfamiliar territory for "i" at least in the spin
dept.. What next?... HyperWhat?

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??