Intel to push 0.13 P4 speeds to give Prescott room

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 11 Nov 2003 at 16:11

According to XbitLabs, Intel sources have indicated that Pentium 4s manufactured to the 0.13micron process may enjoy another speedier incarnation before the move to 90nm Prescott chips.

Both Extreme Edition and the standard Socket 478 Pentium 4 chips will get an outing at 3.4GHz with 2MB and 512KB of level 2 cache respectively in Q1 of 2004.

In the same quarter, the Prescott chip is set to emerge fairly cautiously, at 2.8GHz with 1MB of Level 2 cache but no Hyper Threading features. Faster Prescott chips had previously been allotted an early Feb date, but these are no longer scheduled for such a definite date, said the sources.

This may be a defensive strategy against any such delays in volume Prescott production, in the light of AMD ramping up speeds for its high end Athlon 64 FX chip, of which XbitLabs reported sources talking up a 2.4GHz Athlon FX-53 in time for Christmas.

XbitLabs also reports that 90nm Celeron chips will only appear in Q2 2004, clocked at 2.8GHz and 3.06GHz.