After talking a lot about Intel's Prescott we should not forget that another processor has been declared the top model: The 3.4 GHz version of the Pentium 4, with an optional 2 MB L3 cache and designated as the Extreme Edition. The latter already worked perfectly in order to spoil AMD's 64 Bit processor launch last fall, so why shouldn't this CPU be released with more clock speed?

It's not much of a surprise if I say that the Extreme Edition forges ahead thanks to its huge additional cache. And it is equally expensive, or would anybody call $900 a special offer? By the way, that is the street price for the 3.2 GHz version?

The 'conventional' Pentium 4 at 3.4 GHz should be much more important, as it is approximately half the price and is meant to target AMD's Athlon64. Of course we included almost all available desktop processors to our benchmark suite.