Intel Corp. has made a yet another offering to gamers looking for additional performance of their PCs at any cost with the release of the new i925XE core-logic that brings 1066MHz processor system bus along with the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz microprocessor.

Intel’s 925XE chipset is a speed-bin of the i925X that has been available for a while. The chipset sports PCI Express x16 bus for graphics cards, dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM memory with up to 533MHz clock-speed and processors with 800MHz and 1066MHz Quad Pumped Bus. The i925XE memory controller hub may be paired with ICH6-series of I/O controllers that bring high definition audio and advanced RAID technologies.

Besides new platform Intel is also introducing its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor clocked at 3.46GHz with 1066MHz processor system bus. Typically higher-speed processor system bus increases data speed between the central processing unit and the rest of the system. However, in not all the cases such increase positively affects performance.

“The transition of the Pentium 4 XE CPUs to 1066MHz bus ensures a tiny performance gain, and the clock frequency of the top solution in this family grew up really insignificantly. As a result, everything we have already said about Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs in our previous articles remains valid even after the launch of the new model in the family,” said Ilya Gavrichenkov, CPU and platform analyst for X-bit labs, in newly released article titled “Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz and i925XE Express: 1066MHz Bus in Action!”.

In mid-October Intel’s arch rival AMD has released its top CPU aimed at gamers and enthusiasts – the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, which outperforms Intel’s new offering in a number of applications. Furthermore, AMD’s chip boasts 64-bit capability, which may bring additional speed boosts once appropriate operating system is available.

Intel is shipping the boxed Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition 3.46GHz to distributors for system integrators worldwide. In 1000 unit quantities, the Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition at 3.46GHz sells for $999. For computer makers and system integrators, Intel also announced availability of the D925XECV2 and D925XEBC2 ATX and micro-ATX form factor desktop mainboards.