Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (800Mhz FSB) Processor

Company: Intel
Product: P4 3.2GHz
Street Price: ~$unknown
Date Reviewed: June 23, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao
 

Introduction:

A few weeks ago more processors were released by Intel based on the 800 MHz FSB. Today is the release of Intel's latest flagship processor, the Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU. Over the past year we have seen Intel ramp up the clock speeds on the P4. Sadly this is probably the end of the line for the legendary Northwood core. The new processors from Intel will have to use a .09-micron process to help keep the core running cooler. These new processors are codenamed Prescott and since they are awhile away, Intel has decided to up the speed one more time from the 3.0C.

The 3.2GHz CPU has all the functions of the 3.0C and the lower clocked 800 MHz FSB Pentium 4's. One of the main features is what Intel calls Hyperthreading Technology. Hyperthreading was first introduced with the Pentium 4 3.06 processor. We are sure you have already heard enough about Hyperthreading to have an idea of what it is. So we aren't going to go into the technicalities. We would like to briefly talk about the other major feature which is of course, the 800 MHz FSB platform. In short, the reason for moving to a faster bus speed is that it provides more bandwidth for the system to utilize. The performance gains of the faster FSB will not be really apparent unless the CPU speed is fast and needs to request more data. The 3.2 makes a total of 5 processors based on an 800 MHz FSB.

With all of that being said, let's move on with the review and see what Intel's latest creation has to offer to end-users. We will compare the processor to the others based on the 800 MHz FSB to see how much performance is gained. As always, we will briefly cover the overclocking ability of the processor. If you are reading this review to compare an Intel's CPU to the latest AMD offering, we do not actually have any of AMD's latest CPU's to compare.