Intel Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.20 socket: Socket 478

What the Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.20 is

The Intel Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.20 is a 3.2 GHz single-core mobile processor with Hyper-Threading from September 2003. It runs one NetBurst Northwood core at 3.2 GHz with no turbo, so 1 core gives 2 threads. Cache is 512 KB of L2 on a 130 nm process. Power is rated at 76 W in a Socket 478 package.

The 3.20 HT tops the Mobile Pentium 4 HT Northwood line with a 533 MT/s front side bus and a 24x multiplier. Intel sold it at 653 dollars in September 2003. The chip supports MMX, SSE and SSE2 with Hyper-Threading. No faster Mobile Pentium 4 HT Northwood followed, since Prescott mobiles took over with 1 MB of cache and higher power. Desktop Northwood HT 3.20 parts at the same 3.2 GHz offer 82 W operation in towers with an 800 MT/s bus, so bus and power separate mobile from desktop at identical frequency.

Top mobile clocks with threads and a 533 MT/s bus suited flagship large notebooks before Prescott designs. The 76 W envelope needs the largest notebook heat pipe with wall power operation. That thermal ceiling is why Prescott mobiles soon replaced Northwood mobiles for higher clocks, trading power for cache.

Socket and motherboard compatibility

The Mobile HT 3.20 fits Socket 478 flagship notebooks with mobile HT support. It needs a notebook Socket 478 board qualified for top mobile power. The Socket vs chipset: what decides whether a CPU works guide covers pairing rules.

Flagship desktop-replacement notebooks are the natural match. Only chassis qualified for 76 W mobile operation sustain the bin.

Memory, PCIe and cooling

Memory is DDR through the board chipset with notebook slots. The CPU has no controller.

A 533 MT/s bus ties the CPU to the chipset, while graphics hangs off the chipset. No PCIe lanes originate on the die. Cooling is the flagship notebook heat pipe for 76 W operation with strong fans.

Upgrade paths

On Socket 478 the 3.20 tops Mobile Pentium 4 HT Northwood, so same generation upgrades stop here. Prescott Mobile HT 518 parts offer 1 MB of cache as a die shrink path where listed. Pentium M Dothan parts on Socket 479 offer thin notebook paths. The 3.20 removes with the socket mechanism, so swaps need no solder work.