Intel officially launches the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition was already mentioned during the Intel Developer Forum in September and today Intel officially launched their first Pentium 4 Extreme Edition running at 3.2GHz. The Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition has the same specifications as normal Pentium 4 C's but it has an additional 2MB L3 cache.

Built on Intel's 0.13-micron process technology, the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition features a 512-kilobyte Level 2 cache, a two-megabyte Level 3 cache and an 800 MHz system bus speed. This processor is compatible with the existing Intel 865 (Springdale) and Intel 875 (Canterwood) chipset families and standard system memory. The two-megabyte Level 3 cache can preload a graphics frame buffer or a video frame before it is required by the processor, enabling higher throughput and faster frame rates when accessing memory and I/O devices. This results in more realistic game play and improved video editing performance. Increased CPU performance also enables software vendors to create sophisticated software physics engines, which allows realistic character movements, and artificial intelligence, allowing computer-controlled characters to be much more lifelike. The Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition at 3.20 GHz delivers a SPECint*_base2000 benchmark result of 1583 and a SPECfp*_base2000 result of 1474***.

In 1,000 unit quantities, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor at 3.2 GHz sells for $925.