So much for the taste of what's in store. To achieve this kind of ultimate power, state-of-the-art hardware is the name of the game. The cooling system also needed to be modified in order to achieve our goal.

The speed of the P4 may not be a world record; what is remarkable is the stability of the system at this speed.

We have a history of breaking speed records. During the last Intel Developer Forum in September 2002 we announced a P4 running at 3.6 GHz - Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz - and published our measurements. This caused something of a stir and annoyed some of our competitors, who were quick to question our data. It is now less than a year ago that we tested the first 3 GHz system in our labs - Tom's Hardware Speed Project: Pentium 4, Over 3 GHz! So far so good. Today we will show you what the P4 can do at 4.1 GHz. Industry insiders know that Intel plans to go no higher than 3.6 GHz during 2003, especially as this speed is being pushed by the new P4 with Prescott core.

The Tom's Hardware System: we began with 1 GB of memory and carried out our later tests with 512 MB.