Intel’s new range of desktop processors has been a long time coming, but at last it’s arrived - and it leaves all others in the dust

A range of cut-down Core 2 Duo processors that are fine for everyday tasks.

A diverse family including some stellar CPUs and numerous also-rans.

Can Intel steal Phenom's performance thunder with this top-end quad core chip?

This first of a new generation is only a little faster than the old, but its potential is clearly huge

In its day, it held the speed crown, but today’s dual-core CPUs leave it trailing for power, efficiency and value.

Impressive technology, but increasing cores doesn’t necessarily increase performance.

The 915 is an good budget choice, but elsewhere this family is eclipsed by newer offerings.

If you’re locked into Intel, there’s value to be had. But AMD’s Sempron is the budget-buyer’s king.

While AMD has been waving hybrid 32/64-bit CPUs for some time now, speculation has risen over when Intel would unleash their product onto an already expecting market. Here it is, Intel's newest addition to their Extreme Edition clocking in at an impressive 3.73GHz and boasting a 2MB L3 cache.

The latest iteration of the Pentium 4, code named Prescott, is an interesting development for a few reasons. First off, it represents Intel's entry to the world of 90nm (90 nanometre, or 0.09 micron) fabrication for processors. For the uninitiated, all this means is the size of individual components on the processor core have been shrunk to even smaller levels. It's a natural part of processor evolution to shrink the size of components, as it allows more transistors to be packed into a smaller space, reduces heat and resistance, and this all leads to faster CPUs.

Chance or coincidence? AMD releases the Athlon 64, specifically targeted at the consumer performance market, and only days later Intel announces a secret processor aimed squarely at the same MHz-hungry community: the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (P4EE).

Your PC is only as good as your last upgrade, and this is truer than ever with current gaming and software applications milking machines for everything they're worth.

Intel has promised that Hyper-Threading (HT) will deliver increased efficiency and decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish multiple processes. But is it really all that it’s cracked up to be?

The Athlon XP 2700+ represents a significant leap forward for the Athlon line – it solves a long-term problem by stepping up the default frontside bus (FSB) speed from 266MHz to 333MHz.

Intel has promised that Hyper-Threading (HT) will deliver increased efficiency and decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish multiple processes. But is it really all that it's cracked up to be?