Intel 6xx Series
In the last year or so amd has been kicking ass in the enthusiast market and Intel’s Prescott hasn’t really been a rival. One good thing is Intel went back to the drawing board and come up with the line of 6xx cpus.
More Cache-
The new line features an extra 1mb of L2 which makes up a little in benchmarks. The cache shines in applications and games where the cpu can avoid accessing slower main memory. Intel needed to increase the die-size from 122 to 135mm in order to accommodate the 169 million transistors where as the original Prescott had 125. It’s actually a pretty small looking chip and that’s because of the 90nm process.
Enhanced Speedstep Technology-
Another new feature is the enhanced speedstep technology which was taken from the Pentium M lineup. The way speedstep works is that it decreases power consumption by dynamically adjusting or scaling cpu clock speeds and voltages. This is beneficial because you decrease heat. This is great for a large scale company that uses hundreds of computers. It’s almost like being in idle mode instead of constantly running your comp at full power.
Execute Disable Bit-
This is taken from the Itanium core and helps fight specific types of hacking. If there’s a buffer overflow in a network that can allow vulnerability to worms and viruses. This Execute Disable Bit allows the cpu to designate some areas in the system memory that code is able to run and not run. In a network where a worm enters code this feature disables its code execution so it can’t hurt the users system.
64 Bit-
An obvious one is 64 bit architecture. With XP Pro’s release of XP64 this is a great time to have a cpu capable of this. Intel has named this EM64T and is also using this for Xeon and dual core cpus.
90nm-
As we all know the 90nm process is a great overclocker and it’s great on this cpu. Users are easily getting to 4.0+ GHz on air and water and phase change are seeing 4.5-5.0+. Along with the 2mb of L2 these cpus are an incredible value. The Extreme Edition 3.73 is nothing more than an overclocked 640 with the multi dropped to 14. With the 478 EE’s the extra 2mb of L3 brought something new but not existent this time around which is a little disappointing. All in all this is a great cpu and anyone on a budget should consider this.
In the last year or so amd has been kicking ass in the enthusiast market and Intel’s Prescott hasn’t really been a rival. One good thing is Intel went back to the drawing board and come up with the line of 6xx cpus.
More Cache-
The new line features an extra 1mb of L2 which makes up a little in benchmarks. The cache shines in applications and games where the cpu can avoid accessing slower main memory. Intel needed to increase the die-size from 122 to 135mm in order to accommodate the 169 million transistors where as the original Prescott had 125. It’s actually a pretty small looking chip and that’s because of the 90nm process.
Enhanced Speedstep Technology-
Another new feature is the enhanced speedstep technology which was taken from the Pentium M lineup. The way speedstep works is that it decreases power consumption by dynamically adjusting or scaling cpu clock speeds and voltages. This is beneficial because you decrease heat. This is great for a large scale company that uses hundreds of computers. It’s almost like being in idle mode instead of constantly running your comp at full power.
Execute Disable Bit-
This is taken from the Itanium core and helps fight specific types of hacking. If there’s a buffer overflow in a network that can allow vulnerability to worms and viruses. This Execute Disable Bit allows the cpu to designate some areas in the system memory that code is able to run and not run. In a network where a worm enters code this feature disables its code execution so it can’t hurt the users system.
64 Bit-
An obvious one is 64 bit architecture. With XP Pro’s release of XP64 this is a great time to have a cpu capable of this. Intel has named this EM64T and is also using this for Xeon and dual core cpus.
90nm-
As we all know the 90nm process is a great overclocker and it’s great on this cpu. Users are easily getting to 4.0+ GHz on air and water and phase change are seeing 4.5-5.0+. Along with the 2mb of L2 these cpus are an incredible value. The Extreme Edition 3.73 is nothing more than an overclocked 640 with the multi dropped to 14. With the 478 EE’s the extra 2mb of L3 brought something new but not existent this time around which is a little disappointing. All in all this is a great cpu and anyone on a budget should consider this.
) but who would want one vs. Athlon 64? 
