Intel plans not to use megahertz at all, or limit the usage of clock-speeds, with its next-generation Pentium 4 and Celeron processors in LGA775 packaging. Instead, the chip giant is reportedly planning to employ its recently unveiled strategy of model numbers.

Starting from the second quarter of 2004 Intel Corporation will mark its CPUs according to their position in its product family or series. The first digit in the model number reflects product positioning; another two digits reveal relative performance within a concrete family of chips. The rating will make pretty tough to compare microprocessors of different series by their working frequency, but is supposed to reveal clear processor’s place in its family.

While preliminary and pretty precise names for Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Intel Pentium 4, Intel Celeron, Intel Pentium M “Dothan”, Intel Pentium M “Banias” and Intel Celeron M chips were revealed on the 19^th of March, 2004, AnandTech web-site decided to add some details into the matrix of future CPUs from Intel. Apparently, Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors at 3.20GHz and 3.40GHz will be called Pentium 4 730 and Pentium 4 760 respectively. Other model numbers reported in the article are the same as those unveiled in mid-March at X-bit labs.

The rating system implies that you should be able to move easily from the youngest to the top model within a processor family with a certain discrete step. For instance, Dothan and Prescott processors will differ from the next models by an increment divisible by 10. Celeron processors will be rated with a smaller increment divisible by 5, because the difference in their performance and clock frequency is smaller.

The size of this increment will be determined by the cache size as well as the processor bus frequency. For instance, if Dothan 1.60GHz with 400MHz processor system bus is rated as 725 then a similar model with 533MHz bus will be rated as 730 even if its working frequency is the same.

Intel will use model numbers for its desktop processors starting from LGA775 chips that are supposed to come in the first half of the year, presumably in June, along with new chipsets featuring PCI Express bus and DDR2 memory. Mobile chips marked with model numbers, not core-clock, will also be available sometime in mid-year.