Intel Corp (INTC)

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John, Re: The Pentium 4 processor at 3.06 GHz delivers the world's highest Microsoft Windows* desktop processor performance as measured by SPEC CPU 2000* with a SPECint_base2000* score of 1099 and a SPECfp_base2000* score of 1077

So this is the official word from Intel on SPEC performance. As was speculated, the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 does about 1100 in SPECint. Both SPECint and SPECfp fall short of the projected Hammer SPEC scores by about a hundred points; although, those scores were for a version of Hammer with 1MB of L2 cache - enough to give a sizable increase to SPEC performance. The desktop Hammer will more likely have 256KB or 512KB of L2 cache, which may not outperform the score that Intel just supplied for their processor, which is already shipping in quantity right now. Dell systems are already offering 3GHz processors online, and Pricewatch is already starting to receive entries. It remains to be seen how long it will take before Hammer hits the streets, let alone the OEMs.

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