The Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 processors were two of the most popular processors in the early 2000s. While they share some similarities, there are also some significant differences between them. In this article, we’ll take a look at those differences and explain why they matter.
What is Pentium 3?
Pentium 3 was a microprocessor released by Intel in 1999. It was the successor to Pentium 2 and was available in both desktop and mobile versions. Pentium 3 was the first Pentium processor to be based on the Intel P6 microarchitecture. It featured significantly improved performance over Pentium 2, as well as support for SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions), a set of instructions that accelerated floating-point and multimedia operations. Pentium 3 was eventually succeeded by Pentium 4 in 2000. Despite its relatively short lifespan, Pentium 3 remains one of Intel’s most successful processors, with over 15 million units sold.
What is Pentium 4?
Pentium 4 is a line of single-core Central Processing Units (CPUs) that was introduced by Intel in 2000. The Pentium 4 was the successor to the Pentium III, and it represented a significant change in architecture. Instead of the traditional “pipe” architecture, the Pentium 4 used a more advanced “net burst” architecture. This allowed the Pentium 4 to achieve clock speeds of 3 GHz or higher. In addition, the Pentium 4 featured an enhanced version of Intel’s hyperthreading technology, which allowed it to simulate the effect of having two CPUs. The Pentium 4 was eventually succeeded by the Pentium D, which was a dual-core version of the Pentium 4. However, the Pentium 4 remains an important part of Intel’s history, and it helped to cement the company’s position as a leading manufacturer of CPUs.
Difference between Pentium 3 and Pentium 4
Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 processors are both members of Intel’s Pentium processor family. The Pentium 3 was released in 1999 and was the first Pentium processor to be built on a 0.18-micron process. This meant that the Pentium 3 could achieve higher clock speeds than previous Pentium processors. The Pentium 4 was released in 2000 and featured a number of significant improvements over the Pentium 3.
Perhaps the most important of these was the switch to a 0.13-micron process, which allowed the Pentium 4 to reach even higher clock speeds. In addition, the Pentium 4 featured 512KB of L2 cache, double the amount found on the Pentium 3. As a result, the Pentium 4 offered significantly better performance than its predecessor.
Conclusion
The Pentium 4 processor was designed to be faster and more powerful than the Pentium III. It featured a new microarchitecture, called NetBurst, that delivered higher performance through increased clock speeds and longer pipelines. However, this increase in speed came at the cost of power efficiency, which ultimately led to its demise. The Pentium 4 processors were eventually replaced by the Core series of processors from Intel.
