Hot discussions on completely different topics are constantly occupied by the minds of our readers. You, of course, first of all thought about the endless debate of fans of two well-known companies manufacturing processors and two manufacturers of graphics chips? This is so, however, any topic can serve as a motive for the dispute. For example, I was much amused by the headline of one of the recent discussions in our conference - " Shaurma vs chicken grilled ".

I decided to make my modest contribution to the overall controversy and find out which of the overclocked processors running at 3600 MHz is faster. The fact is that I got an Intel Pentium 4 2.0A processor - a hero of recent testing " Superclock Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz ". Let me remind you that, judging by the results of the tests, it is capable of running at 3.8 GHz, so far I have not come across such overclocked processors.

I install the processor into the system, start to check and find out some interesting details. I'm not going to question the results of the first tests of this processor. That's right - it really works stably at FSB 190 MHz with a voltage of 1.725 V and the further increase in voltage does not help it to raise the bar of acceleration higher. However, it turned out that it works no less stably at the nominal voltage, if you reduce the FSB frequency by only 10 MHz!

If we need to find out the overclocking potential of the processor, set a record, then I do not see anything terrible in increasing the voltage Vcore by 0.2 V and even higher, if there is sufficient cooling. But you will agree that there is no sense in so much pulling up the voltage, just in order to overclock the processor for another 10 MHz on the bus. If we are interested in long-term stable operation, then I personally choose 3.6 GHz at a nominal voltage, than 3.8 GHz with a greatly overestimated.

If you remember, we have an Intel Pentium 4 2.4C processor, which is also capable of overclocking to 3.6 GHz. Which of the two processors will be faster? Experienced overclockers will not hesitate to answer that the one with the higher bus frequency. Yes, but not everything is so simple and obvious. We did not immediately find such an overclocked P4 2.4C, there were a lot of tests (" Intel Pentium 4 2.4C, Myths and Reality of Asynchronous Overclocking ", " Costa Rica P 4 2.4C ") and all of them showed that despite the fact that when overclocking the processor Much higher than 200 MHz FSB we have to sacrifice the synchrony of memory, the increased frequency pays for everything.

All this is true, but before that, we did not have any processors running at a bus speed of less than 200 MHz and capable of accelerating to such high frequencies. Stepping D1 has changed this situation. When overclocking, we do not exceed FSB 200 MHz and yet the processor is able to work stably at the frequency of 3.6 GHz, and synchronously with the memory. This time the test results are not easy to predict in advance.

Look, what an interesting situation is obtained. Formally, all the advantages on the side of the 2.4C - it works at 300 MHz (1200 QPB), and the 2.0A is only 180 MHz. The 2.4C memory operates at 200 MHz, and 2.0A has the same 180 MHz. However, 2.4C works asynchronously with memory, a divider is used 3: 2, while the system on overclocked 2.0A is completely synchronous, and you know that in most cases the advantage is in the synchronous operation of the processor and memory. What will win - a high frequency or synchronism? That's what I was interested in.

For verification, I used the system of the following configuration:

  • Motherboard - Asus P4C800 Deluxe, rev 1.03, BIOS 1006
  • Processors:
  • Video card - ATI Radeon 9700Pro
  • Memory - 2x256 MB Kingston PC3500 HyperX
  • Hard Drive - IBM DTLA 305020
  • Cooler - Zalman CNPS-7000A-Cu
  • Thermopaste - KPT-8
  • The operating system is MS Windows XP SP1, DX 9.0b, Catalyst 4.2.

As you can see, I did not even bother to update the BIOS, update the drivers, or reinstall the operating system. The maximum achievable results in this case do not interest us, we need to see the difference between the processors, for which they were accelerated to the same frequency.

Memory also worked with identical timings.

After that, a number of tests were carried out in those programs that were found on a long-established system. Of course, the settings in the programs and the test conditions were exactly the same, only the processors changed.

As you can see, the miracle did not happen. Despite the fact that the system with the overclocked P4 2.0A processor worked synchronously and this is a big plus, the 2.4C system with a higher bus frequency in all tests turned out to be a bit faster, though. Definitely.

Definitely, but unconvincing. We forgot about another difference between the two processors - Hyper-Threading, which P4 does not have 2.0A, but P4 has 2.4С. So what gives an increase in speed - the FSB frequency or the presence of HT? For testing, I conducted several tests with a P4 [email protected] GHz processor, and Hyper-Threading was disabled in the BIOS.

I will not bother you with new numbers and diagrams, especially since I did not conduct the whole cycle of tests. I will only say that HT has absolutely nothing to do with it. The advantage of P4 2.4С@3.6 GHz over P4 [email protected] GHz remains the same and is caused by the higher frequency of the bus on which the overclocked processor operates. The results shown by the P4 2.4С@3.6 GHz processor with HT and without HT remained practically unchanged in all tests ... except for one.

In PCMark04, the final result was reduced to 4855 parrots, which is quite comparable with 4843, which showed P4 [email protected] GHz. Well, this is just an additional confirmation of the well-known fact that PCMark04 is a synthetic program artificially optimized for dual-processor operation. Its results have nothing to do with reality and the program should not be used in tests and comparisons.

So, the P4 2.4C processor, overclocked to a frequency of 3.6 GHz, in all tests confidently ahead of the equal frequency P4 2.0A. Does this mean that you should forget about P4 2.0A? I'm not sure for several reasons.

First, it's cost. Today, the P4 2.0A sells at a price slightly above $ 100, which is quite small, especially considering its potential overclocking capabilities, if the processor is based on the D1 stepping or at least C1. Secondly, the P4 2.4C processors are less common on the market, it's much easier to find P4 2.6 or 2.8 GHz. Their overclocking potential is about the same, but if the difference in performance between P4 2.4С@3.6 GHz and P4 [email protected] GHz is not very high, then when it overclocked to the same P4 2.6 or 2.8 GHz frequencies it will become completely invisible, while As the difference in value will become more tangible. So I would not completely write off the P4 2.0A processor from the accounts. Moreover, our copy of the processor is absolutely stable at a frequency of 3.6 GHz, and 2.4 C passes all the game tests, but gives an error in Prime95.

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