Intel Pentium 4 2.4AGHz or 2.8EGHz? Which one should I buy?

[Bradley]

Hello. I can buy a Pentium 4 Prescott 2.4AGHz for $129 or I can buy a
Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8EGHz for $179. Im trying to decide whether or not
Hyper-Threading and the 800MHz FSB with Dual-Channel memory are worth the
extra $50. And if they are not worth it now, will it be something I would
benefit from in the future? Please help. Thanks.

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

Hello. I can buy a Pentium 4 Prescott 2.4AGHz for $129 or I can buy a
Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8EGHz for $179. Im trying to decide whether or not
Hyper-Threading and the 800MHz FSB with Dual-Channel memory are worth the
extra $50.

Go for a C model, NOT the E.




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[Bradley]

Okay, can you give me a little bit more of an explanation on why not to buy
the E? And where does the A fit into the scheme of things here. That was the
processor I was contemplating as well. All info appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Stacey]

Okay, can you give me a little bit more of an explanation on why not to
buy the E? And where does the A fit into the scheme of things here. That
was the processor I was contemplating as well. All info appreciated.

Do some research. The E runs hotter even though the die was shrunk and it
doesn't seem to perform as well. Looks like intel added pipelines and lost
performance per clock cycle to be able to crank up the Ghz for marketing
reasons? What it boils down to is clock for clock, the E is slower than the
C i.e northwood is faster than prescott.

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

Okay, can you give me a little bit more of an explanation on why not to buy
the E? And where does the A fit into the scheme of things here.

The E model is the Prescott, and has a longer pipeline,
making it substantially slower in some things, and faster nowhere.

It's going to allow faster speeds in the future, but for now it's basically
a slug.




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[Tony Hill]

Okay, can you give me a little bit more of an explanation on why not to buy
the E? And where does the A fit into the scheme of things here. That was the
processor I was contemplating as well. All info appreciated. Thanks.

Both the 2.4A and the 2.8E P4 chips are based on the newer "Prescott"
P4 core. The 2.4A has a 533MT/s bus speed while the 2.8E has a
800MT/s bus speed. I would definitely agree with the others, the best
buy out of these two chips is neither.

Intel's new "Prescott" core has, thus far at least, being a dismal
failure. Clock for clock it's somewhat slower than the older
"Northwood" core on average (faster in a few cases, but more often
than not it's slower) and it consumes a LOT of power. The higher
power consumption not only means slightly higher electrical bills
(only about a $0.50/month difference), but more importantly it means
that you need either a big honking heatsink or a rather loud fan(s) to
keep the thing cool.

The idea of the chip was that Intel was supposed to be able to clock
the Prescott to much higher speeds. Where the Northwood has topped
out at 3.4GHz, the Prescott was supposed to easily make it up to
5.0GHz and beyond. So far that just hasn't happened at all, the
Prescott is struggling to even reach the 3.4GHz speed grade. Rumor
has it that the 2.4A part was never supposed to exist at all, but only
came to be because bin splits of the Prescott were so bad that they
had lots of chips that just couldn't manage to run at 2.8GHz+ speeds
and needed somewhere to sell them.

In the end, the best buy from Intel these days is almost certainly the
2.8C GHz P4, or possibly the 3.0C GHz chip if your looking to spend a
bit more money. If you want to save a few bucks you might be able to
find a deal on the older 2.6C or 2.4C GHz processors.

To answer your original question though, I would say that Yes, the
extra clock speed and especially the higher bus speed are more than
worth spending the extra $50. Clock speed alone might not make the
difference, that'll maybe only translate into a 5-10% performance
advantage. However the bus speed adds another 10-15% performance
boost on top of that, making the 2.8E a fair bit faster than the old
2.4A chip.