Conclusion

First of all I would like to stress that Pentium Extreme Edition and Pentium D processors will very soon all move to the new C1 core stepping. This will ensure some improvement of their features. Although the new core cannot boast higher overclocking potential, it still boasts two indisputable advantages: slightly lower heat dissipation and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology support. Pentium Extreme Edition 965 is the first CPU based on the new core in our lab.

However, I don’t think you discovered anything new and surprising about the new Pentium Extreme Edition 965 we have just reviewed, which is positioned at the top of the price list. The Presler core used in this processor simply got overclocked by another 266MHz, so that the new Pentium Extreme Edition 965 CPU features 3.73GHz nominal clock speed. This frequency alongside with the enabled Hyper-Threading Technology support helped the Intel’s dual-core newcomer to improve its performance in many tests. At least now Pentium Extreme Edition 965 wins in a much greater number of benchmarks. However, all these are the tasks dealing with image and video processing as well as final rendering, and are nothing like games. So, even though Pentium Extreme Edition 965 is positioned as an extreme gaming solution, it is very unlikely to win a lot of market here. Especially, since its performance-per-watt ratio is considerably worse than what the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 has to offer. And this parameter has been turned into a primary CPU quality indicator lately.

So, Pentium Extreme Edition 965 will hardly affect the situation in the today’s processor market. Everyone is already waiting impatiently on the new Intel CPUs aka Conroe that are due to the market in late summer. As a result, the launch of Pentium Extreme Edition 965 will hardly create any significant stir in the gaming enthusiast community.