Considering the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition's Xeon roots, we didn't expect the processor to be a capable enthusiast. However, it proved stable right up to 3.6GHz, which is where we benchmarked it.

Even at 3.8GHz, the chip can load Windows; it simply isn't stable in a 3D environment.

We wanted to stress the processor itself in our overclocking endeavors, so rather than push the test bed's motherboard with front side bus adjustments, we took advantage of the fact that our Extreme Edition sample sports an unlocked multiplier. It remains to be seen whether Intel follows AMD's lead by unlocking its enthusiast-oriented products, but if so, look to the Extreme Edition for impressive overclocking results.

PCStats Test System Specs:

Computer Hardware Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition (800MHz) Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (800MHz) AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (400MHz) Motherboards: ABIT IC7-MAX3 875P ASUS SK8N nForce3 150 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 400 Ultra Videocard: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB (Det. 45.23) Memory: Corsair PC3500 CAS2 Corsair Registered PC3200 CAS2 Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM 37GB SATA (x2 RAID 0) CDROM: NEC 52x CD-ROM PowerSupply: Vantec 470W Stealth PSU Software Setup Windows XP Professional with SP1 DirectX 9.0b Workstation Benchmarks PC Magazine Business Winstone 2002 AquaMark 3 Super PI ScienceMark 2.0 Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo 3D Mark03 Quake III: Arena v.1.32 PC Mark 2002 SiSoftware Sandra MAX3

Winstone 2002	Source: Zdnet

Business Winstone 2002 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit applications on Windows 98, Windows 2000 (SP6 or later), Windows Me, or Windows XP. Business Winstone doesn't mimic what these packages do; it runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete those activities to produce its performance scores.

Winstone 2002 Benchmark Results
	Business Winstone
1	Athlon64 FX-51	47.7
2.	AthlonXP 3200+	42.1
3.	Pentium 4 3.2GHz	41.0
4.	Pentium 4 3.2GHz EE	43.9
5	Pentium 4 3.6GHz EE (OC'd)	46.2

AMD's micro-architecture favors integer code, such as office productivity applications. The Athlon XP's 10-stage pipeline is more efficient per clock cycle than the Pentium 4, and the benchmark results reflect that fact. The Athlon 64 FX fares even better, likely because of the processor's integrated memory controller.