Processor question

[linthat22]

I just ordered a Pentium 4 chip, but it says it's the 3.0E Ghz.

What does the E stand for? I've looked all over the net and can't find anything. Being that I've been out of the newer technology loop, I'm a little behind. (last new piece I bought was a Kyro II card )

(It's upgrade time)

 

[cristic]

It stands for "a revision of the Prescott core"

 

[Guden Oden]

The E core revision features the "no-execute bit" as far as I can remember, which is sort of a fake virus protection feature (it causes a software exception if a buffer overflow tries to run code in a memory page flagged as data, but doesn't catch all buffer overflow errors and seems to cause incompatibility errors with a few pieces of software).

 

[wireframe]

The E (Prescott) basically comes down to socket 478, 1MB L2 cache and SSE3 with Hyper-Threading. It does not have Execute Disable Bit (like AMD's NX-bit) functionality. There is a longer story, but that's the gist of it.

Edit: to put it into perspective. The Pentium 4C, which the E replaced, was socket 478, 512KB L2 cache, SSE2, and Hyper-Threading capable.

 

[Killer-Kris]

The E (Prescott) basically comes down to socket 478, 1MB L2 cache and SSE3 with Hyper-Threading. It does not have Execute Disable Bit (like AMD's NX-bit) functionality. There is a longer story, but that's the gist of it.

Edit: to put it into perspective. The Pentium 4C, which the E replaced, was socket 478, 512KB L2 cache, SSE2, and Hyper-Threading capable.

That's what I thought. The letters after the clock speed like that is different from the revision letter.

The former signifies a change that may be of interest to the average consumer (socket, FSB, cache, etc), and the later signifies that there was a change done by Intel to the core, whether it was a bug fix, or simply to improve yields, though it normally doesn't make any difference to the end user.

Edit: The letter after the clock speed also signifies that there was a major change done and that there are other processors with what would other wise the same name and speed available. ie. P4 at 3.0GHz w\ 533MHz FSB, and a 3.0GHz w\ 800MHz FSB will have different letters.

 

[cristic]

To somewhat sum it up for Presctt E:
http://www.geek.com/procspec/intel/prescott.htm

A newer F version is also available.

 

[linthat22]

To somewhat sum it up for Presctt E:
http://www.geek.com/procspec/intel/prescott.htm

A newer F version is also available.

Cool, that was perfect, thank you!!!

(and thank you all for your input)