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The Intel Pentium 4 processor.
The Intel 1.8GHz processor is the latest revision of the Pentium 4 CPU.
Several characteristics distinguish the Pentium 4 from the Pentium III - so many in fact that we consecrated an entire article to the subject, which you can consult by clicking on the provided link.
With a price three times higher than that of the AMD Athlon 1.4GHz, though, can the Pentium 1.8GHz really hold its own?
That's of the questions we'll be answering.
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The 6th generation of the Pentium 4 mostly identical to previous renditions of the P4, except for the obvious difference in clock-frequency. Since the differences are so slight, we'll be concentrating on performance measurements throughout this article.
The following is a summary of the P4 1.8GHz's power consumption:
Voltage = 1.75 volts
Current = 52.7 ampres
Power dissipation = 66.7 watts
One of the advantages of having a CPU supplied directly from the manufacturer (in this case Intel), is that such parts are typically un-burdened by a clock multiplier lock.
Since our test board (the MSI 850 Pro), also allows the clock multiplier to be changed, we were able to play around with this option and see how the chip responded. Unfortunately, the results were not encouraging.
While the clock multiplier may not be locked in this case, all values higher than 18X default to 18. As a result, it became apparent that the tweaking the FSB would be our only way of Overclocking. Unfortunately for us, the first revision of the MSI 850 Pro doesn't allow the FSB to be altered, which eliminated any possibility of Overclocking on our part. On the bright side, we expect it only to be a matter of time before the second, Overclockable rendition of the 850 Pro makes it to our doorstep.
All that said, lets head in to the tests.
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