AMD's and Intel's End-of-Year CPU Buyer's Guide

Intel Pentium 4

Like the AthlonXP, there are now numerous progress reports of overclocking attempts on the Pentium 4 with Northwood core. A year ago, processors generally couldn't cope with more than approx. 2.8 GHz; now values around the 3.2 GHz mark with air-cooling are usually no problem. We used a Pentium 4 with 2.6 GHz and HT and ratcheted it right up to 3.2 GHz by overclocking the FSB speed from 200 to 245 MHz. Finally, we overclocked a 3.0 GHz model and the 3.2 GHz Extreme Edition to 225 MHz system speed and 3.6 GHz chip speed.

We got a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 to run at 3.2 GHz without further ado.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

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.