Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Northwood Introduction Recently I took a look at Intel's quickest 0.18u processor and we commented that Intel were moving to 0.13u soon with the new Northwood processors. In the time that's passed Intel have come up with the goods as promised and here we are today with a closer look at the new chip.

At the time of the 2GHz 'Willamette' review the 'Northwood' had just become available in 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz forms and the 2.2 sat proudly at the top of the tree in Intel's grand scheme of things. That's still the case today with the 2.4GHz processor on the 0.13u process being Intel's most powerful consumer offering.

Intel Pentium 4 Cpu 1.80ghz Drivers For Mac

What's changed since then is that the new 0.13 micron processors have also become available at slower speeds in volume, specifically 1.6 and 1.8, and it's the 1.8GHz processor that I'll be looking at today. A couple of sites are pushing the 1.6A as the processor of choice from Intel due to price, low multiplier (remember, multipliers are fixed on Intel consumer CPU's) and their ability to overclock VERY well. We're a big fan of the 1.8 around these parts however with myself and a few good friends getting used to running and overclocking these new processors on a variety of motherboards. We took a close look at the underlying architecture for the Pentium 4 in the 2GHz Willamette review so if you want to brush up on your core knowledge then take a look, specifically the section on Netburst.

You could also do a lot worse than hit somewhere like Anandtech if you want to make sure you have all bases covered. So what's changed other than the move to the 0.13 micron die process with these new CPU's? The most obvious change is the move to 512kb of cache memory which brings with it a few key benefits. We saw in the previous review that with the long pipeline in the Pentium 4, being able to keep it busy for as long as possible is where the speed gains are to be found. If you think of the extra cache memory as a bigger buffer between the CPU and main memory then you can see why it helps to keep the later stages of the pipe busy where the 256kb version would maybe have some difficulty. Intel have speculated that when running existing code, only around 33% of the execution units are in use at any one time with the other two thirds of the CPU sitting idle. That's a lot of untapped power so the extra cache helps keep the pipe busier and in use more often.

Also, as always with a die shrink, the core voltage needed for proper operation drops, in this case from 1.75V to a max Vcore of 1.5V (more on this later). Onto the performance. Performance As usual when we take a look at CPU performance we'll be running Sandra, POVRay, 3DMark and also for a decent test of CPU speed, Quake3. We don't usually look at Q3 in our CPU reviews but we'll have a quick look today. We'll check out overclocked performance too on the same graphs to keep things nice and compact and save you reading gargantuan amounts of repeated information. As always, a look at the test platform.