Intel Pentium 4 1.6A Overclocking!

[Anonymous]

Are you sure thats a northwood core, because i think there are P4's with 478 socket that still arent northwoods.

Well i guess the next real question is how does an overclocked 1.6A without RDRAM fair against an unlocked and overclocked XP using within 7% of the same pricetag (cpu/mobo/ram) WITHOUT shipping because i still think that is too variable to test.

We should get a TT writer to do it... hehe... j/k

Hmmm.. not sure about the Northwood core thingy, I *could* be wrong, but I didn't know there were ANY non-Northwood 512K's out there, besides, it is a 1.8a, which tells me northwood. As for your price comparison, you have to throw in a HSF for the Athlon... unlocked? Well, if you go by this:

intel MSI 845 Ultra w/ ata133 raid, usb2.0, etc. ~$130
intel P4 1.6a w/ HSF, OC's to 2250 EASY ~$140
$270

AMD Athlon XP 1800+/266 FSB PROCESSOR CPU - RETAIL Athlon XP 1800+/ 1.53GHz, AX1800BOX ~$130
Gigabyte VA-7RVXP with all the godies ~$140
$270

Both use DDR, both have similar system board specs (since I have both). Now, I don't have any unlocked XP 1800+'s, but based on Overclockers.com's CPU database: http://overclockers.cssftware.com/cpudb/Showamd.cfm
just scroll to the bottom, I don't count watercooling here. With that retail HSF, you won't go above 1650, and I'll be impressed if you do that. By that same database, 2.4GHz is not out of reach for the 1.6a P4. So, according to AMD, 1650 would be a 1950/2000+ PR score. According to the technical community, we might give it a 2100+. I'll take the P4 at 2.2, 2.3, or 2.4GHz over that AMD with surgery performed on it any day. :)

That's my best general assesment of it for you.
-Bill

[GraveLayer]

JediAgent,
RDRam is CHEAPER than DDR Ram....
I just put a 1.6A system together last weekend. 1st Pentium in a couple of years. But I couldn't pass up the easy OC'ing of the Northwood matched with Samsung 16-device RDRam, and a Asus P4T-E w/ICS chips....
Investment total was $440...
Running at 133fsb or 2125 right out of the box!

[MySTiCuSS]

Man i wished that i had bought a p4! HEHE i have my xp now for 2 months!

[JediAgent]

JediAgent,
RDRam is CHEAPER than DDR Ram....
I just put a 1.6A system together last weekend. 1st Pentium in a couple of years. But I couldn't pass up the easy OC'ing of the Northwood matched with Samsung 16-device RDRam, and a Asus P4T-E w/ICS chips....
Investment total was 0...
Running at 133fsb or 2125 right out of the box!

I KNOW. The P4 will work better with the RDRAM than DDR, hence my skepticism on whether a 2.4GHz P4 will work a 1.8GHz unlocked and overclocked XP 1800. But then again i may be entirely wrong as i havent seen benchmarks for a 1.6A overclocked, and the XP isnt even on a .13 process yet.

[Anonymous]

Man you people are lame :)

The AMD cpu performce much better than its counterpart Intel

take an Athlon 1800+ (1533mhz) against an 2ghz intel 478 and opps did the little AMD beat the Intel in benchmarks oohh why yes it did !

and i myself have OCed the 1800+ to 1750 with retail heatsink !

I agree that Intel has tons of MHZ but not the performance that it should have at those MHZ ! its easy to figure out why !

Intel has 1 instruction less than AMD per clockcykel ! that is why the lower clocked AMD performce better than the higher clocked Intel !

!

[JediAgent]

*jumps out from behind unregistered*

yeah, so there!

[zeradul]

Well, you have succeeded in convincing me.

Not necessarily that one is better than the other, but that prices CAN BE much closer than I had thought/ and as they used to be.

Back in october when I built my computer, ram was 32$ a stick! Now its hovering around 90! Back then RDRAM was insane.

I will definatly be eyeing anandtech for an article about this. If Anand deems the 1.6 worthy of extreme overclocking, without compromising any other aspect, then I will certainly look into them in the future.