What Is a Pentium 4 CPU?
It is rare that a major corporation at the top of its industry makes a mistake, but it does happen. The Intel Pentium 4 proves that even the best sometimes have off days.
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History
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The first Intel Pentium 4 processor was introduced in 2000, as a successor to the Pentium 3. Variants of the Pentium 4 were produced until 2008.
Architecture
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The Pentium 4 line of processors used the "Netburst" architecture, which focused on rapidly executing single threads by clocking processors at unusually high speeds. Intel had planned to clock Pentium 4 processors up to 10 Ghz, but was only able to reach 3.8 Ghz.
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Performance
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Pentium 4 processors were often slower than Athlon processors with similar clock speeds and were rarely able to keep up with Athlon processors with a similar price.
Compatibility
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Pentium 4 processors debuted using Socket 423, then moved onto Socket 478 and eventually LGA775. Pentium 4 processors built prior to Intel's introduction of LGA775 are not compatible with 64-bit operating systems.
Heat Issues
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Problems with heat were the downfall of the Pentium 4. Pentium 4 processors had to be clocked higher than competing Athlon processors to provide better performance, but this caused them to run too hot for use in desktop computers that lacked substantial cooling capacity.
Legacy
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The Netburst architecture in the Pentium 4 was unable to achieve the high clock speeds Intel had hoped for without overheating. As a result, Intel created the new Intel Core architecture, which debuted in 2006 and was the flagship of Intel's processors until the Nehalem architecture arrived in 2008.
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References
- Photo Credit processor image by Valentin Mosichev from Fotolia.com
