The Pentium processor's 18th birthday

We chart the ups and downs of Intel's best-loved processor

The Pentium 4 architecture was a radical departure from the efficient Pentium III. The new NetBurst core meant an extremely pipeline allowed massively high frequency speeds — the fastest Pentium 4 was 3.8GHz, — but performance per clock cycle was no better than older models. Pentium 4s were also very thermally demanding, with some processors producing up to 115W in heat. The P4 was also the first Pentium line to feature an Extreme Edition model, and the first foray into 64-bit processing.

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