The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz will list for $999. Our range of benchmarks shows that it's a marginally better performer than its predecessor, the 3.4GHz XE with an 800MHz bus. In many cases, the fastest Pentium 4 of all is the P4 560 3.6GHz, which sells for well under half the price of the Extreme Edition 3.46GHz. And the undisputed overall performance king of the x86 CPU world is the Athlon 64 FX-55, which sells for an also ridiculous but comparatively cheaper $827.

In short, I don't recommend buying this CPU. I'm pleased to see Intel going to extraordinary lengths to push the boundaries of performance at the high end of its desktop CPU line up. That is a very cool, very welcome development. Still, this processor isn't a good deal by any stretch of the imagination, and it doesn't really live up to its billing as the most "extreme performance" desktop CPU, especially for gaming. There's really no way around that.

I'm also disappointed that the primary benefit of the P4 XE 3.46GHz, the move to a 1066MHz front-side bus, won't trickle down to the rest of the Pentium 4 product line until some time next year. Usually, a new high-end CPU offers some benefit for the rest of the product line, either in terms of price or features. That's not really the case here.