Hyperthreading is sweet

Quote from waggie945:

I'm sorry, I believe that I mispoke when I stated a couple of threads back that the Dell's on the Dimension 8300 at 3.0 and 3.2 are Prescotts. They are most likely Northwoods.

Anything that has 512kb of cache is a Northwood, and the Prescott versions are the ones that carry L2 caches with 1MB and L3 caches with 2MB. These are the latest Pentium 4 microprocessors that are just now being released.

Northwood processors = 0.13 micron process

Prescott processors = 0.09 micron process

Hyperthreading occurs on all of the above as long as there is an 800 Mghrz front side bus. Some older Northwoods run on a 533Mhz front side bus like the P4's at 2.8B

So, Intel uses a B designation for their Northwood processors with a 533 MHz front side bus, and a C designation for Northwoods that run on a 800 MHz front side bus. Both of which get an L2 cache of 512k.

The E and EE designation is for the new Prescott processors with a 800 MHz front side bus that get the L2 cache of 1MB and L3 cache of 2MB.

:)
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So if I'm a buyer in the next 1-4 weeks am I missing out on anything "major" going with the Northwood 3.2 ghz with the 800 mhz bus and the 400 mhz DRAM?

I mean are these Prescott chips rolling out any day now?

My situation is basically this. I have a 3.2 ghz p4 I trade on at work with the 533 mhz bus a gig of DRAM. It is powerful enough that I can run a backtest while trading and not worry about anything locking up. As to whether it is hyperthreaded, I don't know. How can I tell? Its about 4 months old.

At home, I have a three year old 1.2 ghz PC with 512 of the RDRAM. and a laptop. Never used the 1.2 for much other than surfing the net and occassional trading, however the backtesting bug has hit me the last 2-3 months and I often bring home ideas I'm working on and it brings the computer at home to an absolute standstill.

To somewhat compensate I test ideas at home on a group of stocks 1/10th the size that I do at the office, that helps on time but it still pegs the home pc at 100% cpu usage in the meantime.

The hyperthreaded stuff sounds great to me cause that is my biggest problem at home right now. If I start a backtest I basically can't do anything else until its finished, so If I absolutely have to do something else sometimes I have no choice but to stop the backtest. (this sucks because it might be an 8 hour optimization that is 7 hours through....so stopping it screws the whole thing up)

All comments appreciated....and someone post a new coupon to the dell coupon thread this weekend. I think its time to spec one out.


:p
 
Quote from waggie945:

I installed the 36.7 Gig Western Digital SATA "Raptor" into my Dell Dimension 8300. This drive flies at 10,000 RPM and I love it. You can grab them at www.newegg.com for about $112.00

Western Digital also just came out with the 74 Gigabyte version of the 10,000 RPM "Raptor" and it goes for $215.00

Average Seek Time: 4.5ms
Average Write Time: 5.9ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time: 0.6ms
Full Stroke Seek: 10.2ms

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65
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Is it hot and noisy? Does it justify the price? You can get a regular WD 120G, 7200rpm for $100.
 
I have not heard any noise coming from my "Raptor" drive.

This might also be because I have a fan on my PCI slot graphics card that makes a lot of noise, AND I also a hard drive cooler that is screwed into the bottom of the "Raptor" that has 2-small fans blowing air on it. Basically, my computer gives off a constant "whirring" sound, but none of the high-pitched "whines" that some people have complained about on newegg.com

The SATA drive comes with the neat little flat interface cable that beats the heck out of the large "ribbon" cables of the old ATA and IDE drives. This allows for way better air circulation inside your box. Switching the other drive cables ( floppy, DVD, CD-ROM ) to round cables helps with air circulation as well.

I am also running a "Silence-400" powersupply unit in my Dell 8300 from PC Power & Cooling. It has a regulator on the fan and only turns the fan on when there is demand for it, hence the name "Silencer". Yet, with the load that I am running the fan is obviously on most of the time, hence the "whir" coming from my case.

4 fans = "whir"

:D
 
How does one go about choosing? Which has the best bang for the buck?

http://www.intel.com/design/Pentium4/prodbref/index.htm?iid=ipp_dlc_procp4p+prod_brief&#highlights

Speed Cache size Hyper-Threading System Bus Product name
2.40 GHz 512KB No 400MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.40 GHz
2.40B GHz 512KB No 533MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.40B GHz
2.40C GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 2.40C GHz
2.60 GHz 512KB No 400MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.60 GHz
2.60C GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 2.60C GHz
2.66 GHz 512KB No 533MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.66 GHz
2.80 GHz 512KB No 533MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.80 GHz
2.80C GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 2.80C GHz
3 GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3 GHz
3.06 GHz 512KB Yes 533MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3.06 GHz
3.20 GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3.20 GHz
3.40 GHz 512KB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3.40 GHz
3.20 GHz 512KB L2 cache 2MB L3 cache Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology Extreme Edition 3.20 GHz
3.40 GHz 512KB L2 cache 2MB L3 cache Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology Extreme Edition 3.40 GHz
2.80A GHz 1MB No 533MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.80A GHz
2.80E GHz 1MB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 2.80E GHz
3E GHz 1MB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3E GHz
3.20E GHz 1MB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3.20E GHz
3.40E GHz 1MB Yes 800MHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology 3.40E GHz
 
I kind of like the P4 "Northwood" 800 front-side bus microprocessor at 3.0

It has some pretty good performance figures for a modest price at www.newegg.com ( $224.00 ) and you get the HYPERTHREADING feature without the heat issues that I hear are prevalent with the new "Prescott" processors that Intel has recently released.

*Note: One word about Hyperthreading.
Your applications have to be written for it in order to benefit from the increased speed. Most trading apps are not written with Hyperthreading in mind.
 
It's a tough call. For $20 more I can get the E version with 1mb cache and SSE3. I wonder if these things really run that hot? Why would Intel put out a product which runs too hot?

Either way I will need an 875p based motherboard. I don't want built in sound or video. Anyone have suggestions for a motherboard like that?

Thanks in advance.
 
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