Intel Pumps Up The Pentium 4 'Prescott'

Exactly a year ago Intel debuted their new Prescott series of Pentium 4 CPUs that used a new 90nm process technology, featured larger L1 and L2 caches, deeper pipelines and added support to 13 new instructions that is commonly referred as SSE3. At its inception, it was available on the Socket-478 format but was soon transitioned to the newer LGA775 package for Intel's major platform transition that took place in mid 2004. By then these Prescott-based Pentium 4 CPUs acquired the 5xx processor model number nomenclature and were no longer marketed by mere clock speed, which is only part of the whole CPU equation.

Today, Intel updates its mainstream CPU product lineup with a new 600 series of Pentium 4 processors. Although they are still based on the Prescott core and manufactured on a 90nm process technology, these CPUs belong to another processor family altogether. As the processor model number scheme suggests, the core has undergone major updates and important features such as a huge 2MB L2 cache, Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T), Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) and Execute Disable Bit (XD Bit) have now been integrated. Not to worry about the technical jargons as we detail each of them for better understanding and how these features will extend your computing experience in time to come.

The Pentium 4 600 series is now available in four different speed ratings and a fifth one will join this series at a slightly later timeframe. All of these processors are compatible with existing LGA775 platforms such as the Intel 915P, 915G, 925X and 925XE Express chipsets and only require a BIOS update if you are upgrading from a much older version of these boards.