Intel's Big Kick Off: 925XE Chipset and P4EE 3.46 GHz

Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz, FSB1066

The new processor is still based on the 130 nm Gallatin core. Unlike the Northwood core used for the Pentium 4 on Socket 478, Gallatin comes with a 512 kB L2 cache and an additional 2 MB L3 cache. In contrast to L1 and L2 caches of all Pentium 4s, the Extreme Edition's third cache layer works exclusively, which means that high-level cache contents are not replicated into the lower level (e.g. L2 to L3).

Of course, electrical and thermal specifications have not changed much. The nominal voltage is 1.525 to 1.600 V, while the TDP (Thermal Design Power) moves from 109.6 to 110.7 W at a Tcase maximum of 66°C. The new top model runs considerably cooler than the Pentium 4 Processor 560 at 3.6 GHz.

At FSB800, Asus allows for three different memory modes, up to DDR2-600...

... while the setting offering the best performance will be FSB1066 and DDR2-711. Be sure you get high-quality DDR2-667 DIMMs before doing this.

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.