Whats the dif

[Radical Dreamer]

I have been hearing alot about the "Northwood" and the "williamette" P4, is this different core or what? Whats the big dif in the 2?

I dont know much about intel, I'm an AMD man, but this was a free system, school funded.

[Radical Dreamer]

K as of now I have founf out that the willy is .18 and the north is .13, is that the only dif

[TrackMan]

the northwood is .13 micron. this allows it to run cooler. also, becasue they had more room after the die shrink, intel boosted the level 2 cache on the north wood up to 512k versus the willy's 256k. there are also supposed to be a couple tweaks to the die to get it to run better, but most of the performance gain comes from the 512k of level 2 cache.

The great thing about these is the low speed northwoods (1.6a, 1.8a) can be easily overclocked with the 133 MHZ FSB

[MacGyver]

Williamette uses 423 pin socket, the Northwood uses a 478 pin socket. So if you're buying a P4, go with the Northwood as the 423 socket is a dead-end upgrade path. Also, HSF's for the 423 don't work with the 478, and vice versa. So if you're buying a HSF for your P4, make sure you get the right one!

[Radical Dreamer]

Well its the 478 pin 1.6, but sisoft sandra still says its the willy, i have the latest version of it, so could it be that the norths were not out at the time of the sisoft release?

Also the box says 256 cache, so I am assuming this is the willy, would I be right?

[MacGyver]

P4 processors are available with different levels of cache, it's not a flat 256K with the Willy and 512K with the Northwood. So when making a purchase, make sure you get the 512K of cache!

[TrackMan]

the willy is found in two versions one with a 423 pin socket, and another with a 478 pin socket. the 423 got phased out a while ago. motherboards with the 478 socket are compatible with both the northwood and the willamette cpu's. all northwoods are 478 pin most high speed willy's are 478 pin but there are still some 423 pin chips floating around. be sure to get the one that says 512 k level 2 cache, that's the higher performing version of pentium 4 aka northwood.