During the past few months the situation in the CPU market has changed dramatically. Within a relatively short period of time there appeared new platforms, as well as new processor families: both, AMD and Intel have already introduced a few new solutions. However, against the background of high AMD’s activity, Intel’s actions look more like weak attempts to retain the existing market share, which are evidently less efficient than the rival’s. However, it is still too early to conclude that Intel suffered an unpleasant defeat in the new round of competition. In fact, the next year will dot all i’s, and in the meanwhile the company decided to sit on the fence and reconsider some of its future plans, moving the focus from the clock frequency growth to introduction of new features and extending new platforms’ functionality.

Nevertheless, sometimes Intel continues announcing new processor models, which have already been put on the roadmaps. A week and a half ago we introduced to you two new AMD CPUs targeted for hardware enthusiasts and hardcore gamers with quite a bit of cash to spend. Today Intel is proud to introduce to us their response to that launch: one more Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor with a slightly higher core clock frequency and faster system bus. However, even keeping this fact in mind we still have every right to say that AMD CPU line is somewhat fuller than that of Intel’s.

Unfortunately, there are no CPUs among the Intel’s offering, which would allow you to build a system priced between $1300-$1500. The top Pentium 4 on Prescott core, Pentium 4 560, has become too inexpensive for that, while Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors cost more than twice as much as the top Pentium 4 CPUs. This gap in the product range was supposed to be filled with the Pentium 4 3.8GHz and 4.0GHz, scheduled for the end of the year. However, now Pentium 4 580 working at the actual 4.0GHz has been cancelled and there is only Pentium 4 570 working at 3.8GHz due in mid November, which will have to compete with the new Athlon 64 3800+ and Athlon 64 4000+ processors from AMD.

As far as the new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is concerned, its clock frequency has grown up to 3.46GHz due to the increase in the Quad Pumped Bus frequency to 1066GHz. This CPU should become Intel’s fastest solution for the period until Q1 2005, when Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with 3.73GHz clock frequency comes to replace it. Note that this is a pretty hard task, actually, because the previous Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz worked at a slightly lower clock frequency, but was designed in Socket478 form-factor, i.e. could be used in faster platforms based on i875P chipset. The new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz will be available only in LGA775 form-factor and hence will have to run only in systems with PCI Express x16 graphics and DDR2 SDRAM, which still yield a little bit in performance to their predecessors.

However, we will be comparing the performance of the new CPU with the solutions available in the today’s market later in this article, and in the meanwhile let’s try to find out what the new CPU is like and where it belongs according to Intel’s product positioning.