14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has released on Wednesday, 27 December 2005, a new high end processor, the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 which is based on the 65 nanometers core, codenamed Presler. Intel says that the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 will be available on January 16, for an MSRP (Stands for Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) of US$999. This is expected to coincide with a massive new marketing effort which may include a replacement for the familiar "Intel Inside" logo.
The Presler core is clocked at 3.46GHz (13.0 x 267MHz) with a 1066MHz front side bus. Unlike the Smithfield core, which was used in the 90 nanometers Pentium D's and Pentium Extreme Edition 840, the Presler core has two separate dies.
The 955 doubles the amount of Level 2 (L2) cache from 2MB to 4MB, and increases the front side bus clock speed from 800MHz to 1066MHz. Like its predecessor, it features Hyperthreading, which means that the CPU can run four separate threads in parallel. The CPU supports the 64-bit EMT64 extensions that first debuted with AMD's Opteron line, and the Execute Disable Bit to prevent against certain types of malware driven buffer-overflow attacks. The CPU contains approximately 376 million transistors and operates between 1.2 and 1.33 volts while drawing a power of 130 watts.
The differences between this processor and the Extreme Edition 840 are: - Cache increase from 2x1 to 2x2 MB - Frequency increase from 3.2 to 3.46 GHz - FSB increase from 800 to 1066 - VT support (Virtualization)
The processor power consumption is reduced and is between the Pentium D 820 and Pentium D 830 (2.8 and 3.0 GHz). Coupled to an i975X chipset, this processor supports VT technology or Virtual Technology which permits the use of several operating systems with a single computer via a compatible VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor).