FUDBusters: Intel's Pentium 4 Processor

FUDBust: The 90-nanometer claim wasn't part of Intel's hype and fanfare. This was a relatively low-key announcement by Intel, but the hardware community touted Prescott to be something along the lines of the Second Coming for processors. And then they had the gall to be upset that it wasn't. Intel never promised the huge speed gains the hardware community expected. This is simply a case of media frenzy.

Don't get me wrong, there are things to like about the Prescott processor, including SSE3 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 3), a 16-KB L1 cache and a 1-MB L2 cache. It's designed to have some small new features and take clock speeds higher in future chips.

Corporate buyers simply don't have to worry that much about it. Having Prescott chips in corporate machines is not a deal-breaker, and isn't likely to be until the Prescott chips outstrip the current P4 in megahertz.

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