Caching in

As previously declared the latest Extreme Edition 3.46GHz continues to distance itself from the standard Pentium 4 series through its large 2MB L3 cache. Now that it has also has been awarded the added benefit of the faster 1066MHz FSB its reign extends further but from a pure apples to apples comparison point of view its the cache that tells it apart. In its present form the Extreme Edition tallies 2.5MB of onboard cache (L1 + L2 + L3) which if compared to the Prescott Pentium 4 is more than 2x its size (2568KB Vs 1040KB), and a massive almost 5x the size of a Northwood based Pentium 4 (2568KB Vs 520KB). Evaluated against the likes of AMD's Athlon 64 FX-5x (Clawhammer) series its still about twice larger (2568KB Vs 1280KB) while against Athlon64 (Newcastle, Winchester) over 3x (2568KB Vs 768KB). All this cache is what Intel pins their hopes on when especially underlining the "Extreme" keyword, but whether this it’s enough to permit the Extreme Edition to pull ahead from its domestic peers and competition is at significantly the mercy of software. Intel would dance the night away if software was all written to absorb the merits of large caches but unfortunately for them at best its style can be referenced as "varied". While it is true that a large cache holds the prospective to increasing performance the influence it carries can span anything from nil to considerable improvements over that of a standard smaller cache.

The competition, AMD

For the past couple of years Intel has been facing fierce competition from the likes of AMD and today that form of rivalry continues. A substantial element of the IT industry has cast their growing support for Intel's archenemy AMD and perhaps it should be no surprise to anyone as to why. AMD's recent Athlon 64/FX-5x series processors have been reaching the grasp of many and represent an offering serious enough to be viewed as a threat to Intel's control as the performance leader. Doing so AMD maintains to employ a different approach to reaching this pinnacle not by pure clock speed but the efficiency it delivers. While there is no qualm about this last statement it is true that the vast majority of software is optimized for Intel processors. Despite the best efforts of both company's it has been evident that neither bare the muscle to entirely be champion in all benchmarks so far. While there is no strict rule of thumb it isn't far from the truth for Netburst to fare better in audio/video encoding, content creation, data analysis whereas the Athlon 64/FX-5x (Newscastle, Winchester, Clawhammer) in games, archiving and multimedia. In the past the Extreme Edition has been observed as an option filling a void at times visible between the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 processors, users witnessing this new launch should expect nothing else than for this saga is to continue. A fresh substance into this currently year old account is Intel's new 1066MHz FSB; with it performance could grow to further heights beyond the increments possible before, at least theoretically.