Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 @ TechReport
 

Before you nod off to sleep and plant your face in the keyboard, realize that this CPU is actually a pair of chips wound up to 3.73GHz and, well, that's a lot and stuff. Perhaps more importantly, thanks to refinements to its 65-nanometer manufacturing process, Intel has found a way to crank up the clock frequency while dialing back the heat on this double-barreled blowtorch of death. In fact, it's more like a blowtorch of pain now, with power consumption actually reduced from the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 we reviewed a few months back, despite the 965's increased clock speed.

The result could be that this CPU based on a lame-duck microarchitecture manages to do something few Pentiums have done in recent times: catch up with the competition from AMD in terms of performance and power use. And if that doesn't work, we can always try turning up the clock speed to 4.53GHz, right? Let's have a look at what Intel's new fastest processor has to offer.