Any difference between P3 and P4?

I was told there isn't really any difference between Pentium 3 and Pentium 4. Is this correct?

 

No. They're based on completely different design philosophies. It just happens that the philosophy used with the P4 is fundamentally flawed for PC design. That doesn't mean the P4 doesn't perform better than the P3 or that the P4 is a fundamentally flawed processor, it just means that Intel could have designed a better desktop processor. At the time, however, it seemed like a good idea.

 

Yess, the northwood core was pretty good, but the originals sucked, and prescott sorta sux, and tenjas was cancelled.. but anyway, yea, the P4 does less instructions each clock cycle and everything... they're compleatly different architectures alright.

 

Depends on what P3 you're talking about, but the higher specced ones were closer than the sub 700's. P4 employed a lot of new design techniques to try and get the best performance and functionality at the time ... and several revisions have been made. IMO the Northwoods were better not because of performance but because they are easier to keep cool and more overclockable than Prescotts (IMX too...).

But yeah, the architechture was completley re-vamped, with the capacity to use HT with other advanced technologies.

 

yea ... i've read articles saying that my Tualatin core Celeron outperforms P4s of the same or even higher speeds (i've also seen benchmarks showing this and it outperforming athlons too of the same speed)... i'm assuming they meant the original design and *not* the northwood core P4s ... so i think that may be what chris2005 heard

 

Yea willimete (the first p4s) sorta sucked, and the P3 would be plenty fast (faster then an athlon clock for clock most likely) if intel hadda uped the fsb, but they didn't so boo!

 

they definitely cut its life short ... im not sure of the compatibilty issues but if they added DDR RAM and a faster FSB like you said ... im sure it would compete with todays line of processors ... i mean not quite as fast as the AthlonFX64 or Extreme Edition(obviously) but good enough to play a game like far cry at a descent frame rate

 

Hm. The thing is, I doubt to you could make a P3 that would have the capacity to go at 1.2Ghz due to the way its manufactured. There just isnt enough pins/space in that socket. Not to mention the chipset that it runs off would also have to advance quite a lot more than most hardware developers are willing to go, when there is a new chip that is faster anyway. What would be the point in putting loads of moola into an old design?

 

Tualatin was designed to be the new Celeron, it was killed because it was faster clock-for-clock than the new P4. almost as fast as the original Athlons were too. tualatin ran at 1,3 and 1,4 Ghz iirc.

 

And that was WITHOUT a faster bus, intel killed the P3 cause they had such a short pipeline so they couldent ramp up the clockspeed liek with the p4 for pr reasons..