Fleeing To The Front: The New Top Model, Intel P4/2800

Recent events in the world of CPUs have been comparable to a duel on a lonely German autobahn on a warm summer night: the big Mercedes, equipped with all options, drives on at consistently high speed and thus manages to remain in the lead. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Ferrari (fitted with standard options only, no aircon) comes up from behind and overtakes the Mercedes, and both cars jockey for the lead.

It's a close race - sometimes the Ferrari overtakes the Mercedes and vice versa. We're talking figuratively about Intel P4/2533 and AMD Athlon XP 2600+, of course - and now Intel introduces a new model that reaches new extremes in speed, taking full advantage of PC1066. And so, the Mercedes gradually manages to pull ahead of the Ferrari. The AMD XP's recent triumph was short-lived.

The new top model: Intel Pentium 4 with 2800 MHz.

Yes indeed, it was only a few days ago that AMD proudly launched the Athlon XP 2600+, which we put through a comprehensive test (see At The Last Second: AMD's Trump Card - The Athlon XP 2600+ ). It was exactly five days before the launch of the Intel Pentium 4/2800, which had been planned months ago. And AMD has been under extra pressure because the Athlon XP with the Thoroughbred "A" core should have made up for a 1000 MHz deficit. Now, the P4/2800 has been launched, and the gap has been reduced to 666 MHz.

To be exact, Intel has introduced four new processors that will be sure to please users who own older motherboards/ chipsets, and who want to upgrade their CPU. For this crowd, Intel has 2.50 GHz and 2.60 GHz variations ready to go, with 100 MHz FSB. The P4/2666 and the P4/2800, on the other hand, with an FSB clock of 133 MHz, promise to bring more speed to the newest platforms. In order to give you an in-depth account of the performance of the two P4 versions (100 MHz and 133 MHz), we put the new CPUs through rigorous testing.

Data of the new P4 with 2800 MHz.