Intel preps faster Pentium 4 Extreme edition bus
WinInfo | at | by Mike
This week the processor giant said it would soon ship a new front-side system bus for the high end chip that will dramatically increase its performance. Currently, P4EE systems are somewhat hobbled by the 800 MHz system bus used by today's motherboards, but Intel will soon ship a new bus that's capable of 1066 MHz, removing a key performance bottleneck. Of course, you still have to be Aristotle Onassis to afford one of these darned things: The P4EE, which is essentially a Xeon chip (wolf) in Pentium 4 (sheep) clothing, commands an impressive stipend over similarly equipped P4 chips. For example, at Dell.com, replacing a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 with a 3.4 GHz P4EE in the company's Dimension XPS system adds almost $650 to the price of the machine.