First things first: Cedar Mill does not perform better than Prescott since it basically is a shrunk Netburst design without major architectural modifications (details below). As a result, the performance level of the Pentium 4 653/651 we used for testing is absolutely on par with that of the Pentium 4 650 (both run 3.4 GHz).
What you will notice though, is the heat dissipation, which has decreased considerably. As a matter of fact, the fan of our CPU cooler would only run at audible rotation speeds when the system is under full load.
Gigabyte's F8 BIOS certifies this Pentium 4 653 to support Virtualization Technology (VT), which perfectly makes sense when looking at the model number.
The 600 series ending on 1 (e.g. Pentium 4 651) will be Cedar Mill, ending on 2 will be Prescott and a 3 represents Cedar Mill with VT.
However, the Intel roadmaps we were able to take a look at so far do not call for a possible 6x3 series... yet.
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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
