Date: March 23rd, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Intel

PRESCOTT HEAT ISSUES

Now the going trend when mentioning that you have a higher end Prescott is usually followed by "Boy, I bet it is hot". Does it run hot? You bet your butt it does. With a thermal output of 103watts compared to an equally clocked northwood at 89watts, the Prescott will easily cause problems if your cooling is not up to snuff.

With the very good copper based cooler I used in previous processor reviews, I could easily keep even a 2.4C @ 3.4Ghz within 45-50 degrees Celsius at full load with an ambient room temperature of 32.

IDLE

LOAD

With the same room temperature in place, the coolest full load temperature I could obtain was 94 degrees Celsius and an idle temperature in the 71 range. Although these temperature can be alarming when comparing them to a Northwood, this could be the new standard for processors to come from Intel in future. Let me say this, high performance heatsink/ water-cooling sales will skyrocket if this is true. If ever you needed an excuse to go to water or vapor phase cooling, you will have one now.

Although it ran rather warm, never ever was any instability noticed or recorded.

* "Rumor" has it that Intel may be working on a heat issue fix as we speak with a small core revision.*

OVERCLOCKING

Now seeing that the processor reviewed today is an Intel engineering sample and because of the heat factor, I chose to not overclock the processor until Tweaknews can obtain a retail sample that would represent a product that the actual consumer would be able to obtain.

Don't get me wrong, this processor will overclock, but my results would not represent what the purchaser could replicate.

Look for an article on 3.4E overclocking in the near future.