I have two Pentium 4 Processors; Pentium 4 @ 3.0GHz HT Technology 800MHz FSB L1 Data = 8KB, L2 Data = 2x512KB MMX, SSE, SSE2 Pentium 4 @ 3.0GHz HT Technology 800MHz FSB L1 Data = 16KB, L2 Data = 1024KB MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 So by logic you would think that the Prescott is faster, but infact I bench marked both, and the Northwood is actually faster. The Northwood machine has 1GB of Ram, while the Prescott has 4GB. So this makes no sense since the Prescott has a larger L2 cache, and it has the SSE3, can someone explain what is happening here, is the Prescott defective? Oh may I add the Prescott also runs about 10 degress hotter than the northwood. Thank You, Jesse My Maxed Out Pentium 4! Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4 HT @ 3.4GHz 4GB DDR Ram (2x500GB) SATA II Drive Windows Vista Ultimate NVIDIA 7600 GT Computing.net Member since 2003!

What you observed is not a surprise to many. The Prescott P4 is infamous for noticeably higher heat dissipation than the Northwood P4. Its seemingly larger L1 cache has a higher access latency & the chip also has 11 stage pipelines more than the Northwood CPU -- 31 vs. 20 which is bound to exacerbate pipeline stalls potentially impacting the chips processing cycle. Much like how the PIII outperformed the early P4s, the Northwood is a tad faster than the Prescott & literally cooler. http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/41389 Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

Yeah you could basicly fry an egg on those prescotts. If it's broke, then blow that sucka up!

Yes, Prescott has a larger cache, but it also has a deeper execution pipeline. Prescott's pipeline has 31 stages while Northwood's "only" has 20. A 31 stage pipeline can be very difficult to stoke, even with a large cache. Northwood is slightly faster per clock cycle than Prescott. It also consumes far less power. Unless you use applications that take advantage of SSE3, you should keep the Northwood and eBay the Pres-hot. Then again, if you actually use SSE3-optimized apps, you should be using a Core 2-based CPU--they have 128-bit (read: f'in fast) SIMD units. The Quad-Pumped Super P3: Pentium M Dothan @ 2.82GHz (166x17) 3GB PC6400 @ 667MHz 9600GT Blu-Ray Modified PowerMac G4 Quicksilver case Homebuilt 1080p projector Vista SP1

Your Prescott has 4 GB of RAM larger than your Northwood of 1 GB. When I had Win 98 SE, it had 64 MB of RAM. I installed another stick of 128 MB RAM to make a total of 192 MB, my Win 98 SE became noticeably slower. All applications opened slower. The machine was exactly the same except for more RAM. How come ? I was not comparing two different machines as you did above. I was comparing the machine with 64 MB to itself with 192 MB. Regards SuatCINI

Your chipset only cached 64 or 128 mb of ram, the chipset was the culprit not the memory.

Thanks for the explanation But whether the chipset cached 64 MB or 128 MB, that should not have made the PC slower because the 64 MB or 128 MB was there. The PC speed should at least have remained the same. Regards SuatCINI