In my last guide, I told you everything there was to know about AMD’s current desktop line up. Well, it wouldn’t be fair to shut out the Intel users now, would it? So, onto the Intel technology guide!

This guide, like the AMD guide, will only focus on what is widely available on the desktop now. So don’t expect anything Pre-P4, or anything to do with the older socket 423 P4s (but if you have any sense you will avoid them anyway :).

Intel’s strategy is a little different to AMD’s. AMD had the intention of changing the world 64 bit with the release of the Athlon 64, but Intel have dragged their heels. X86-64 (which Intel call EM64t, I will refer to it by this from now on) is only just becoming available on the desktop Pentium 4’s, even though it has been in the server processor, Xeon, for a few months now. Intel have been much more interested in 32 bit performance, bumping their clockspeeds as high as they could go. They finally hit a wall, 3.8GHz, and as a result are now forced to find new ways to increase performance. One of these ways is to increase the cache, and another is to implement 64 bit into all their new processors.

Before we go much further, lets discuss the technologies available to Intel users. Unlike AMD, Intel have been making gradual changes to their processors, so gradual in fact we may as well just go straight into the cores. But first lets learn about the various processors available.