Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz LGA775) Processor

As clock frequencies ramp up, packaging is playing a key role in processor performance these days. Important things to keep in mind when thinking about a processor's speed are the interfaces between it and its package and between the package and the motherboard. If the pins or interconnects for either of these interfaces cannot handle transferring data as fast as the chipset's front side bus demands it, then the processor speed is limited by the interface. Although its current processors are not quite outperforming the ability of these interfaces, Intel Corporation decided recently that it was time to introduce a new package for their flagship Pentium 4 line of processors in order to get ahead of the curve a little bit. The engineers at Intel chose a design that is quite different than any other mainstream CPU available today. The processor design itself has not changed; the packaging of the processor is what has changed. Intel is still using the recently released Prescott core (replaced Northwood) for their Pentium 4 line-up.

Intel's new design is the flip-chip land grid array (FC-LGA) package. The most obvious thing that is so unique about this new design is that the pins are removed from the processor package. Yeah, you read that right. The pins are actually permanently attached to the motherboard in the new LGA775 socket. My first thought when I heard about this was, "Wow, no more worry about bending pins." Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth. Now, builders of Intel P4-based systems will have to worry about bending pins that are much harder to unbend, since being in the socket makes them more difficult to manipulate. However, since mainstream consumer motherboards are usually significantly cheaper than P4 processors, it may be fair to say that the consumer still comes out ahead with this new design. However, I doubt that motherboard manufacturers producing motherboards with this new socket are thrilled at all about the prospect of more support calls or RMAs due to bent pins!

Another important thing to note about this new interface is that it allows 775 pins to be crammed into nearly the same space that only 478 and 423 pins were packed into with Intel's previous P4 package/socket interfaces. Of course, more pins means that more power can be delivered to the processor, and more data pins can be on the chip as well. For those not keeping score, this is the third package design for the P4. With the new package and socket designs, Intel has introduced two new chipsets with some great new features.

The 915G Express, 915P Express, and 925X Express are the new chipsets introduced by Intel for this new round of Pentium 4's (check out this chart for a comparison of the three). The two 915 chipsets are targeted at the mainstream PC market, and the 925X chipset is meant for the performance PC market. All of these chipsets support PCI Express, an 800 MHz front side bus, Intel High Definition Audio, four SATA ports, and DDR2 memory. Obviously, Intel wants these new chipsets to take them well into the future.

Thanks to our friends at Monarch Computer Systems, Bjorn3D.com has one of these new LGA775 Pentium 4 processors to play with - the 550, which is clocked at 3.4 GHz. 550? Yes, in case you haven't heard yet, Intel started using a new number scheme for its processors (more info). Intel has an entire lineup of these newly-numbered processors.