Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz: The clock strikes two

Final Words

At 2GHz the Pentium 4 is even more competitive with the Athlon than it has ever been before.  If it weren’t for such a large price discrepancy between the two processors then the recommendation would be a tough one to make but for now the price to performance ratio of the Athlon continues to be superior to the Pentium 4.  If price isn’t a concern, then it’s worth noting there are some situations in which the Pentium 4 2.0GHz is noticeably more than what AMD’s current flagship can offer.  What you really must take away from this review is that the potential for the Pentium 4’s future is becoming more and more visible as the processor matures. 

The Northwood core will bring even more attractive performance to the Pentium 4 and a continually increasing clock speed before the year’s end.  While we seriously doubt Intel will introduce the 133MHz FSB this year, it would only make sense for Intel to eventually transition the Pentium 4 to a 133MHz FSB.  A 0 – 14% increase in performance across the board isn’t bad at all, not to mention what kind of an increase you’d expect with a similar boost in memory bandwidth as well.  Intel’s 850 chipset already works fine at this frequency as does VIA’s P4X266 chipset; the only thing that’s left is official support from Intel.

The performance race will be pretty competitive through the end of this year between AMD and Intel.  With AMD’s upcoming desktop Palomino processors they will be able to remain competitive with Northwood and the Pentium 4 processors announced today.  What will truly heat up is the marketing competition between the two companies as Intel has to convey that they are still the best, while AMD must fight that notion of clock speed equaling performance.