Introduction

Update: 8/27/04 - The charts have all been revised. Thanks go out to all the people that posted corrections in the comments section as well as sending them via email. In addition to the corrections, some further information and commentary has been added to the pages. For anyone that actually comes back to this article for reference information, enjoy the changes!

Foreword by Kristopher Kubicki:
From time to time we stumble upon some truly gifted and patient people here at AnandTech. Some weeks ago I wrote a CPU codename cheatsheet as just something to do in an airport terminal to kill time. Very soon after, an extremely diligent Jarred Walton showed me his rendition of the CPU family tree that he was keeping just for fun!? Knowing I was bested, I offered Jarred a chance at writing a pilot for AT, and here it is! Please enjoy the second, extremely thorough CPU Cheatsheet 2.0.


But loud! what lurks in yonder chassis, hot?
A CPU, my programs it will run!
O Pentium, Pentium! wherefore art thou Pentium?
Obscure thy benchmarks and refuse thy name.
What's in a name? that which we call a chip
By any other name would run as fast.

My sincere apologies to Shakespeare, but that mangled version of Romeo and Juliet is an apt description of the world of computer processors. Once upon a time, we dealt with part numbers and megahertz. Larger numbers meant you had a faster computer. 80286 was faster than 8088 and 8086, and the 80386 was faster still, with the 80486 being the king of performance. Life was simple, and life was good. But that is the distant past; welcome to the present.

Where once we had a relatively small number of processor parts to choose from, we are now inundated with product names, model numbers, code names, and features. Keeping track of what each one means is becoming a rather daunting task. Sure, you can always try Googling the information, but sometimes you'll get conflicting information, or unrelated web sites, or only small tidbits of what you're trying to find out. So, why not put together a clear, concise document that contains all of the relevant information? Easier said than done; however, that is exactly what is attempted in this article.

In order to keep things even remotely concise, the cutoff line has been arbitrarily set to the Pentium II and later Intel processors, and the Athlon and later AMD processors. Anything before that might be interesting for those looking at the history of processors, but for all practical purposes, CPUs that old are no longer worth using. Also absent will be figures for power draw and heat dissipation, mainly because I'm not overly concerned with those values, not to mention that AMD and Intel have very different ways of reporting this information. Besides, Intel and AMD design and test their CPUs with a variety of heatsinks, motherboards, and other components to ensure that everything runs properly, so if you use the proper components, you should be fine.

So what will be included? For this first installment, details on clock frequencies, bus speeds, cache sizes, transistor counts, code names, and a few other items has been compiled. The use of model numbers with processors is also something people will likely have trouble keeping straight, so the details of processors for all Athlon XP and later AMD chips and Pentium 4 and later Intel chips will follow. The code names and features will be presented first, with individual processor specifics listed on the later pages. As a whole, it should be a useful quick reference - or cheat sheet, if you prefer - for anyone trying to find details on a modern x86 processor.

With that said, on to the AMD processors. Why AMD first? Because someone has to be first, and AMD comes before Intel in the alphabet.

AMD Processors
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  • JarredWalton - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link

    #50 - Good catch. Obviously, there was some cutting and pasting involved. At some point, I corrected all of the names, but missed some of the clock speeds (at least on the Intel charts).

    #53 - Yes, you are correct. Someone corrected me before, but I didn't change both AMD charts. The Clawhammer supposedly does not have all three HyperTransport paths, so the FX would have to use the Sledgehammer core. It's just a little odd trying to figure out what AMD is doing on those cores. If it were Intel, every core version (i.e. different cache size, different memory controller, different socket) would probably get its own name. :)
  • OC DETECTIVE - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link

    Actually #25's assertion that the FX 939 is a Clawhammer is incorrect. See details of correspondence with AMD's technical dept.over here
    it is a Sledgehammer!
    http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
  • Pumpkinierre - Sunday, August 29, 2004 - link

    #49 There was a post not so long back that had the Prescott pipeline at 22 stages. But your information is right at launch. I just wonder how valid all this pipeline model is or whether the processor takes what it needs for the task required.
  • karlreading - Sunday, August 29, 2004 - link

    very informative article, very handy when talking hardware!!!
  • heintjeput2 - Sunday, August 29, 2004 - link

    A found a few things who are probably wrong
    P4 2.2 2800 Northwood 512 100 28.0X 478
    should be:
    P4 2.2 2200 Northwood 512 100 22.0X 478

    and:
    P4 3.2E 3800 Prescott 1024 200 19.0X 478
    should be:
    P4 3.2E 3200 Prescott 1024 200 16.0X 478

    P4 540/J 3800 Prescott 1024 200 19.0X T/775
    should be:
    P4 540/J 3200 Prescott 1024 200 16.0X T/775

    P4 3.2C 3800 Northwood 512 200 19.0X 478
    >>
    P4 3.2C 3200 Northwood 512 200 16.0X 478

    P4EE 3.2 3800 Gallatin 512 200 19.0X 478 2048
    >>
    P4EE 3.2 3200 Gallatin 512 200 16.0X 478 2048

    PM 1.2 (LV) 1800 Banias 1024 100 18.0X 478M
    >>
    PM 1.2 (LV) 1200 Banias 1024 100 12.0X 478M ??

    MP4 3.2 HT 3800 Northwood 512 133 28.5X 478M
    >>
    MP4 3.2 HT 3200 Northwood 512 133 25.5X 478M

    Athlon XP-M 2600+ 1933 Barton 512 133.3 14.5X
    >>
    Athlon XP-M 2600+ 2000 Barton 512 133.3 15.0X

    Sempron 3100+ 1800 Paris** 256 200 9.0X 754
    >>
    Sempron 3100+ 1800 Paris* 256 200 9.0X 754
    add:
    Athlon XP-M 2400+ (ULV) 1800 Barton 512 133.3 13.5X
    Athlon XP-M 2400+ (LV) 1800 Barton 512 133.3 13.5X
    Athlon XP-M 2500+ (LV) 1867 Barton 512 133.3 14.0X
    Athlon XP-M 2600+ (LV) 2000 Barton 512 133.3 15.0X
  • IntelUser2000 - Sunday, August 29, 2004 - link

    I don't understand why people don't look up at Anandtech's old articles for information(or at least don't seem to)

    Take a look at the Pentium 4 Willamette article that states 10-stage pipeline for Pentium III and 20-stage pipeline for Pentium 4. I believe the most common figures are the Integer pipelines not including fetch/decode stages(according to your article anyway).

    Link to article: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

    Also why does it say Prescott have 23 stage pipelines?

    "The Prescott further extended the NetBurst pipeline to 23 stages in addition to the 8 fetch/decode stages. For whatever reason, Intel generally describes the pipeline of the Prescott as 31 stages while only calling the earlier design a 20 stage pipeline."
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, August 29, 2004 - link

    47 - Somehow I screwed that up in the update. Sorry. The 133 MHz bus (533 FSB) Xeon chips run in socket 604, so the two later Prestonia core Xeons are socket 604 parts. As far as I know, all the Gallatin Xeon cores are still socket 603.
  • Marlin1975 - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link

    ALL the P4 Xeons are listed at socket 603. I know the later and even current ones are now 604.
  • Zebo - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link

    One of the best guides I even read thanks I learned a lot.:)
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link

    Not like anyone is going to notice anymore (*wink*), but the article has now been updated with all of the corrections as well as additional commentary. I hope this clarifies a few things. If there are still errors, send them my way!

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