Intel beefs up P4 bus

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 14 Apr 2003 at 15:54

Intel brings Hyper-Threading to the masses.

A new Pentium 4 processor is just out the gates and Intel is championing it as the digital media enthusiast's friend.

For one, the 3GHz chip has letters after its name. HT, or Hyper-Threading technology, means that the processor can apply unused resources to different threads, speeding up multi-threaded applications and even on occasions where two separate applications are using different parts of the processor.

The examples Intel uses are instant messaging and online gaming, or editing digital photos while downloading music.

'Working together, Intel's new processor and chipset deliver uncompromising capabilities and performance to PC users who demand the richest digital media, gaming and broadband experience,' said Louis Burns, general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group. 'For the high end of computing, data access has become one of the biggest performance bottlenecks. Performance seekers will benefit from the extremely fast bus and memory technologies of this new compute platform, as well as Pentium 4 processor's Hyper-Threading Technology when multitasking or using threaded applications.'

Add to this a faster system bus - 800MHz over the previous 533MHz - and Intel is claiming a 50 per cent increase in performance.

Along with the processor, Intel is also announcing the 875P chipset, formerly codenamed Canterwood, with support for dual-channel DDR400 MHz system memory.

The chipset features Intel's Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT) and Communications Streaming Architecture (CSA). The former speeds up data flowing between the chip and the system memory, while the latter doubles the bandwidth on the gigabit Ethernet port specified on the chipset.

Other interfaces offered by the chipset aim to induce these multiple tasks that Intel claims will benefit from HT technology. Dual independent DMA audio engines mean you can make an Internet phone call while streaming audio. There's also an 8x AGP interface and integrated USB 2.0. RAID is built-in, as is Serial ATA interface for accelerated disk performance.

Prices in lots of one thousand are $417 each. They are to be available 'shortly'. The chipset costs $53 with software RAID, $50 without. Intel also has its own ATX motherboard available, the D875PBZ featuring Intel Precision Cooling Technology and Intel Rapid BIOS Boot.

See also:

Hyper-Threading: best thing since sliced thread?