Intel Pentium 4 670 Review - PAGE 1

With the recent dual-core drum-beating going on at both the Intel and AMD camps, it's easy to forget that single-core processors are still in existence and still a major player in the computer market. AMD has their Athlon 64 FX line, which continues to be their flagship processor, and Intel has the Pentium 4 6XX series, which still enjoys the fastest clock speeds that Intel has to offer, along with a number of relatively new technologies.

Single-core solutions are not going the way of the dodo just yet -- Intel still has two major updates headed towards the way of the single-core Pentium 4, and I'm sure that a refresh of the FX is in order for AMD at some near point in time. First of all, Intel plans to introduce two more 3.6 and 3.8 GHz models of the Pentium 4, but with an added kick: Vanderpool. Vanderpool is Intel's on-chip virtualization technology, which will allow you to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same hardware. These parts will come with a model number of 662 and 672, respectively.

The second big change awaiting the single-core Pentium 4 is a process change to 65-nm. While Intel is not aiming to raise clock speeds past the 3.8 GHz point with this process change, their major goal is to lower heat dissipation and decrease production costs. The new 65-nm core, code-named Cedarmill, will feature 2 MB of L2 cache, as well as all of the technologies we're used to see on the Prescott. These main-stream and value-oriented processors should arrive in the first quarter of 2006.

Where does this leave us? The Pentium 4 at 3.8 Ghz will probably forever remain the fastest-clocked single-core processor to come from the fabs of Intel. A clock speed of 3.8 GHz is blistering fast, but will it come through when it comes to real performance? Let's find out.