Intel Corporation will unleash later today its first microprocessor with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and supporting i875P (Canterwood) chipset. The Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU will come instead of the originally planned Prescott processors that were delayed towards the Fall, so, Northwood chips with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus is a product that would never appear if there were no problems with ramping up the production of Prescott using 90nm manufacturing technology.

Intel’s Canterwood family of chipsets supports Intel Pentium 4 processors with 400/533/800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and the Hyper-Threading technology. Two DDR SDRAM channels are capable of working with PC3200/2700/2100 DDR SDRAM memory with ECC. In order to further boost memory performance, Intel implements special Performance Acceleration Technology that implies better optimized interaction with the memory subsystem by removing a few stages from the memory addressing procedures and will also use more aggressive memory timings. The Pentium 4 CPUs with 800MHz PSB are the same 0.13 micron Nortwood processors that are available even now.

The price of the first CPU to utilise the 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus will be about $410 or something like that, as we were told by a source with knowledge of the matter. The prices of i875P-based mainboards will be approximately $200, but I suppose that some of them will be cheaper, but another will be even more expensive. The i865PE-based (Springdale) products should definitely cost $20-$40 less, but offer a bit slower performance and come only in late May. Later this year Intel will unveil its 3.20GHz Northwood microprocessor as well as Pentium 4 2.40GHz chip with the Hyper-Threading support and will also adjust its pricing a bit as well. This should allow more consumers to buy all those novelties.

But what will you get if you get a shiny new Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU with the Hyper-Threading technology and the 800MHz QPB as well as a i875P-based mainboard and pay nearly $600 now? Maybe you should wait for some slower chips and i865PE-based mainboards? Well, we know what you are thinking about and have prepared a very nice review where we compared performance offered by Canterwood, Sringdale and i845PE platforms as well as checked what actually 800MHz PSB gives to the good-old Pentium 4 “Northwood” processors. Head over our Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, Intel 875 and Intel 865 Chipsets Review.