Pentium, Schmentium: Decoding CPU Names

Know The Processor Inside Your Computer Case?

Let's look back a year or two to see where we come from. The race for higher and higher clock speeds resulted in shorter and shorter product cycle times - sometimes just a few months. However, these bizarre turnover times came to an end a little over a year ago, because clock speeds could no longer be increased at the pace Intel was running.

AMD quit the Gigahertz race in a half-baked manner back in 2001, and Intel more recently decided that processors should no longer be classified by a GHz designation, but also by new features that provide value to the customer. New features such as the execute disable (XD) bit, EM64T extensions or Enhanced SpeedStep were added - the Athlon 64 already had all of them - and a sequence numbering scheme was introduced. This allowed Intel to tack on a premium price tag to same-clock-speed chips, while tripling the size of its processor portfolio (counting both the older products and the newer model-numbered ones.)

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.