Introduction

Intel has over the last few months copped a huge amount of slack over the Prescott core based Pentium 4. Simply put, the Prescott architecture generates too much heat due to leakage through the 0.09 micron process that Intel has adopted. Intel, however, wants to push the idea that this CPU has nothing wrong with it, despite the many revisions made to the core in order to reduce heat; one such method is to have the CPU thermally throttle its speeds back when the CPU reaches its maximum die temperature. This is a great way to save the CPU from overheating; however, if you buy a 3.6GHz CPU you naturally want it to run at 3.6GHz when you are playing games, not to reduce its speed simply because it cannot be kept cool.

Intel's latest E0 stepping CPU has reduced the thermal envelope to allow a somewhat cooler running processor, reducing the throttling value down to 0% provided you have good ventilation. We have one question though...Why does the Prescott Pentium 4 run so hot, yet the Prescott Celeron D manages to keep well within its limits, runs much cooler and doesn't throttle - in fact, runs just as cool as a Northwood based Celeron? This is a question we will have to look at another day. Today we are going to take a look at Intel's latest desktop architecture, and take a hands-on tour of the latest processors to come from the mix.

So come join us as we look at the new Prescott 64-bit architecture of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with EM64T as well as the Pentium 4 6xx series.

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