P4EE 3.4ghz or P4 660?

[Carfax]

OK, a friend of mine is selling his P4EE 3.466ghz for 500 bucks, which is about a hundred bucks more than what a 660 sells for on Pricewatch.

The 3.46ghz EE should have no problem hitting 4ghz (or slightly more) given the heatsink I'm going to buy; Zalman's newest baby which according to the Xbitlabs review, works like a charm and can adequately cool 4ghz+ P4s with ease.

Or, buy a brand new 660 which I hopefully can overclock to 4.6ghz with the new heatsink, if I'm lucky. Xbit managed to squeeze 1400mhz out of a 2.8ghz E0 stepping, which is impressive for an air cooling setup.

Which one would you guys go for? I'll be doing more gaming than encoding by the way, and the motherboard I'd use would be the Asus PW5D2 along with some 1GB of Patriot DDR2 low latency memory.

The 660's 64-bit compatability isn't such a big deal to me right now, as there aren't any real 64-bit titles.

When the first Prescotts came out, this question wouldn't even have entered my mind because the Northwood's were without a doubt, wholly superior.

However, these new 6xx series chips are fantastic and overclock extremely well given that you have a nice motherboard and power supply.

But, how do they stack up to the Gallatin based EE chips?

Whatever chip I get, will last me until late next year.

All comments and advice will be appreciated :)

[ingentingmendeg]

660 = 3.73EE in my opinion. but the 3.73EE is about 4fps faster in games and multitasking.

[LarsK]

I've had 2 P4 EE Gallatin chips, although they were both socket 478, one 3.2 and one 3.4. I would by far prefer the 660 over a P4 3.46EE. It overclocks a lot better, so even if the EE is better in some games clock for clock, considering the overclocking potential the 660 is way faster in most other applications. Also with the 660 you can run @ 14x multiplier for a higher fsb as well using the lockfree feature. So you can run at either 14x or 18x. The best EE chip I had did 4.4 Ghz in my Mach II GT, my 660 does over 5 Ghz.

[Carfax]

I've had 2 P4 EE Gallatin chips, although they were both socket 478, one 3.2 and one 3.4. I would by far prefer the 660 over a P4 3.46EE. It overclocks a lot better, so even if the EE is better in some games clock for clock, considering the overclocking potential the 660 is way faster in most other applications. Also with the 660 you can run @ 14x multiplier for a higher fsb as well using the lockfree feature. So you can run at either 14x or 18x. The best EE chip I had did 4.4 Ghz in my Mach II GT, my 660 does over 5 Ghz.

Larsk, what is your everyday clockspeed on that Prescott of yours? Do you run it all the time at 5ghz?

Also, are you happy with the performance, especially in gaming? Or, do you sometimes feel you should have built an FX based rig?

I'm hoping to get 4.5/4.6ghz out of my 660 with that new Zalman heatsink, but I don't know if I'll be that lucky.

I'm actually considering waiting for Cedar Mill to come out, because if I get a Cedar Mill at 3.6ghz stock, it should easily overclock to 4.6ghz.

I think 4.6ghz and above is when Prescott's clockspeed overcomes the latency of the L2 cache and the long pipeline.

[LarsK]

The 5 Ghz (4976 Mhz) on the 660 is 24/7 speed. It's actually superpi32M stable up to 5250 Mhz, and 3d bench/game stable up to 5150 Mhz. Superpi at this speed is pretty much on par with a FX-55/57 @ 3.5-3.6 Ghz, so it's pretty fast.

My best friend has a FX-55 system, and for everyday use I much prefer my own. If you opt for an SLI system though, the AMD route would be better as of now, as Nforce4 IE has a number of issues. For everyday tasks the 660 @ 5 Ghz simply rocks.

I very much doubt that you can get to 4.6 Ghz with the Zalman cooler though. Of course newer chips may well clock better than mine, but around 4.4 Ghz completely stable would be my guess. I am currently running my chip at 4356 Mhz in an Abit NI8 SLI, because that all I can get the damn Nforce 4 IE chipset to do stably, but ~4.4 Ghz is still pretty good. Also gaming is just fine here as well.

[Carfax]

Superpi at this speed is pretty much on par with a FX-55/57 @ 3.5-3.6 Ghz, so it's pretty fast.

What about gaming performance (games only, not 3DM or other synthetic stuff)? What speed FX would your Prescott at 5ghz be on par with? My guess would be around 3.2ghz. Just curious :D

I very much doubt that you can get to 4.6 Ghz with the Zalman cooler though.

Yeah, you're probably right. It could probably let me boot at that speed, but I doubt it would be completely stable as you say.

Thing is, a Prescott rig is at it's most formidable in the 4.6ghz and above range and since I don't plan on upgrading again until late next year, I will need as much mhz as possible to get me through big gaming titles like Elderscrolls Oblivion, Unreal Tournament 2007 etc..

I hope hyperthreading enhances the performance of these games, and it should to some level because they will all be multithreaded. So either a slower clocked dual core, or a super fast single core with hyperthreading.

Decisions, decisions :confused: I think I'll wait for Cedar Mill, as it's due out very soon (at the end of this year).

[LarsK]

What about gaming performance (games only, not 3DM or other synthetic stuff)? What speed FX would your Prescott at 5ghz be on par with? My guess would be around 3.2ghz. Just curious :D


Well, honestly I really don't know, how do you rate "completely fluid...." :D I always play @ 1600x1200, with HQ and a single card Doom3 timedemo is ~100 fps. CS:S (HL2) videostresstest is ~200 fps @ 1600x1200, game is absoplutely fluid @ 1600x1200 with 4x fsaa and 8x af. I really wouldn't know what to do with more fps anyway :p:

Most games I play are driving games og flight sims, and they run perfectly fine as well.