Introduction

Love 'em or hate 'em, Intel's Pentium 4 has become one of the longer lasting platform solutions for Intel Corporation since the Socket 7 architecture. Socket 478 came to us in the form of the Willamette core. Intel didn't take long to update the core to the Northwood series, from there Intel ramped the CPU from 1.7GHz right up to the current 3.2GHz. It has been the most scalable core ever, and without a doubt has been the choice for overclockers.

Prescott has recently been introduced, and with some very interesting results. Its performance at a clock for clock basis was simply not able to overtake the Northwood, and when put against the Gallatin (EE) core, it would simply look somewhat poor in comparison. However, one thing in its favour is scalability. Northwood's 0.13um process is stretched to its limits at 3.4GHz, while Prescott's reduced die size of 0.09um allows it to hit 3.7GHz and beyond with relative ease. Today however, we are saying somewhat of a goodbye to the trusty mPGA478 socket that has held the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors to motherboards for over 2 years.

Intel has now introduced their newest design, Socket 775 along with two new processors and two new chipsets. How does it differ from the currently available mPGA478 and what type of performance can we expect from the new designs? Come take a look and find out the answers to the questions.