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

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 FX-55 is AMD's top performer. It's a 2.6GHz beast that will eat through current and future games and applications. Its architecture is based on that of the FX-53, which in turn was based on the first generation FX-51, and AMD has come a long way in bringing 64-bit to the desktop.

The creme de la creme of Athlon 64 products, the 4000+ is a socket 939 CPU with all the bells and whistles. This bad boy clocks in at 2.4GHz, features a 1MB L2 cache and 2GB HyperTransport memory interconnect to work in conjunction with its on-die memory controller.

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?