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The Intel P4 Whitebox

Front View

Rear View

Front with Cover Off

Inside of Case

Board Shot

Processor and Memory Shot

The Products

Pentium 4 1.4Ghz

For the Pentium 4 1.4Ghz processor I am briefly going to go over the key features which encompass the new NetBurst Micro-Architecture technology of the Pentium 4, which include: Hyper Pipelined Technology, Rapid Execution Engine, Advanced Dynamic Execution, Enhanced Floating-point and Multi-media Unit, Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2), 400 MHz System Bus, and cache improvements.

NetBurst Micro-Architecture -
NetBurst Micro-Architecture is a new architecture developed by Intel. It utilizes the IA-32 architecture and is designed to provide an increase in performance. It encompasses several other technologies including: Hyper Pipelined Technology, Rapid Execution Engine, Advanced Dynamic Execution, Enhanced Floating-point and Multi-media Unit, Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2), 400 MHz System Bus, Level 1 Execution Trace Cache, and 256 KB, Level 2 Advanced Transfer Cache.

Hyper Pipelined Technology -
This new technology has taken the P6 micro-architecture on the P3 and doubled it to provide a 20 stage pipeline allowing for more data to be transferred. Just like the widening of a highway allows more traffic to flow down it.

Rapid Execution Engine -
The P4 features architectural, physical, and circuit modifications that increase the speed of the Arithmetic Logical Unit with in the CPU. The modifications allow it to run at double that of the processor core and in turn speed up certain instructions sent to the processor.

Advanced Dynamic Execution -
The P4 pipeline features the ability to accept more instructions at a time than that of the P3. While the P3 featured a 42-instruction window, this has been increased in the P4 to 128. The P4 also features support for 48 loads and 24 stores in the pipeline.

Enhanced Floating-point and Multi-media Unit -
The P4 has increased its floating-point capabilities to 128-bit. Allowing for increased performance in multimedia related task that require floating point calculations.

Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) -
With the P4, the SIMD extensions have been expanded, specifically by the addition of 144 new instructions which include support for 128-bit SIMD integer arithmetic and 128-bit SIMD double-precision floating-point operations. This increases performance on applications that utilize the SIMD extensions.
400 MHz System Bus With the expanded pipeline there also comes support for a higher system bus. The new P4 features a 400Mhz bus which supports a 3.2GB/sec data transfer in and out of the processor, a big step up from that of the P3.

Cache -
Along with all the other improvements, the cache on the P4 has also been revamped to support increased throughput. Specifically a Level 1 Execution Trace Cache has been added which stores up to 12k of decoded instructions in order of execution. This better utilizes the cache of the P4 by separating these instructions from the main execution loop.

D850GB Motherboard

The D850GB Motherboard is the latest P4 desktop motherboard available from Intel. It features support for NetBurst micro-architecture, as well as dual channel RDRAM support. The motherboard also supports the P4 400MHz system bus. The motherboard features 5 PCI slots, one 4x AGP slot and one Communications Network Riser. Other features include ATA/100 support, four USB ports, instantly available suspend to RAM and the famous Intel Rapid Bios Boot, which I love.

Another great thing about the Intel motherboard is its Intel Express Software Suite, which features Intel Express Installer, and Active Monitor. Intel Express Installer allows for easy BIOS updates within windows through a simply installation program, no more boot disks or having to drop to a DOS prompt to install those BIOS updates. A new feature that was not available on the D815EEA motherboard that I reviewed is the new hardware management features that provide software-based monitor of core voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds via the Intel Active Monitor software.

Now for a closer look at the layout of the 850 chipset.

82850 Memory Controller Hub (MCH) -
The 82850 MCH is the interface between the AGP, memory, and processor. For memory it supports dual channel RDRAM with a maximum bandwidth of 3.2GBs/sec. It supports up to 1GB of memory when using 128 RDRAM and 2GB if using 256 RDRAM. The controller also features RDRAM thermal management support to prevent the RDRAM from overheating. For AGP the controller supports 2x/4x AGP support at 1.5v and features support for Fast Writes. For the processor, the controller features support for a 100Mhz processor system bus and 400Mhz data bus.

82801BA I/O Controller Hub (ICH2) -
The 82801BA ICH2 is the I/O controller for the motherboard. It supports 33Mhz PCI bus and is PCI rev 2.2 compliant. It supports ACPI, Enhanced DMA, ATA33/66/100, 2 USB controllers with a total of 4 ports, System Management Bus, Alert on LAN, and Alert on LAN2 support.