1 definition by Laughing Atu Manning
A computer processor offed by Intell in several formats. Most Pentium 4s did manage to outpreform the competing AMD processors. However, at the Pentium 4 hit a wall at 4GHz (4 billion operations per second) and no faster proccesor could be made. The Pentium 4 line drew a lot of power and made alot of heat, preventing any Pentium 4 from being run over 4GHz without exream measures. Intel was forced to sell the last editions of the Pentium 4 with no speed increase, with only additional features to enhance the preformance. Intel's years of marketing the Pentium line as faster and therefore better finaly turned on them as the could increase the processes per second no further, and ironicaly lost buisiness to AMD processors which were able to be run at rates beyond those recomended by the manufacturer (overclocking).
In the summer of 2002 the 2.4 to 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 outpreformed AMD's Athlon. However by 2005 the Prescott Pentium 4 achitecture wasn't released in the planned 4GHz version, due to it LOSSING performance at sny higher speed due to delays in the on-chip memory chache. Intel introduced Pentium 4 as supposedly desinged for speeds up to 10GHz. This simpy never happened.
by Laughing Atu Manning August 24, 2006