It’s an interesting time to be shopping for flagship processors, isn’t it? Intel has three different 3.4GHz Pentium 4 chips currently listed for sale. Of those, only the “Northwood”-based variant is widely available, with its 512KB L2 cache. And purportedly, that’s the way it’s going to be for a while longer.

AMD has a contender of its own rated for 3400+ levels of speed. At $400, it isn’t exactly affordable, but it does come in just a tad cheaper than Intel’s 3.4GHz Northwood. Then, if you’re willing to step up to the plate, AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-51, a processor with no given indication of performance other than its FX designation, beckons. True to its pedigree, the Athlon 64 FX offers the utmost in performance from AMD at a premium price. Moreover, there’s only one of them, meaning AMD will only offer one version of the FX at a time.



Link: Firingsquad