Introduction

When Intel first announced the Pentium 4 CPU and its changes, we all believed that Intel would once again take its place as head of the super-fast processors. On release date we found ourselves questioning this. When tested against benchmarks of the time, Intel's Pentium 4 processor at the same clock speeds as the AMD Athlon (EG P4 1.4GHz against Athlon 1.4GHz), the Pentium 4 showed to be lagging well behind its AMD competitors, and even in Office applications behind the old Pentium 3 processor. This turned out to be one of the biggest jokes in the PC industry.

Since this time, Intel has learned that the market won't follow what the Corporation wants, but rather what is faster and cheaper. Intel lost quite a bit of the market share when the Pentium 4 was released, and it wasn't until the P4 hit 1.8GHz and beyond that it started to prove itself as a fast all-round CPU. Introduction of the Northwood core and the i845D chipsets helped Intel reduce the costs of P4 systems, and improving speeds, performance and that dreaded word all CPU makers don't want to know about, "Overclocking".

Recently, Intel released its new 2.4GHz P4 CPU and it was the fastest P4 to hit the retail market. Now with rumors of Celeron CPU's being made on the P4 core with 400MHz FSB, Intel needs something to push its flagship P4 to the top. Intel's answer was moving to 533MHz FSB with its 2.26, 2.4, 2.53 and 2.66GHz CPU's. The gap between Intel and AMD is growing even bigger.

Today we have been fortunate enough to receive Intel's most recent addition to the Intel Mega-GHz race, the Pentium 4 2.8GHz.