Let me start my conclusion by saying that I've almost always used Intel CPUs in my main gaming system up until the advent of the AMD Athlon 64 CPU. I've had a Pentium 120, Pentium II 300, Pentium III 450, Pentium III 600, Pentium 4 2.8, Pentium 4 3.0 in my computer prior to the Athlon 64 3800+ I have in it now. Recently, I have had bad experiences with the Intel 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 Prescott. Temperatures of this CPU read on the very high side even on first boot. As such Intel's recent CPUs have left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

My experiences with the 660 CPU and with the 3.73 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition has for the most part been pleasant. No abnormal temperature readings or crashes were noticed during testing. Performance compared to the 3.4 GHz Extreme Edition I use in motherboard testing is nothing to write home about. In gaming, the 3.73 GHz sometimes trails the 3.4 GHz in my testing by a small amount, but mostly leads it. Office applications seem to get a boost compared to the 3.4 GHz EE, as shown by Sysmark 2004 and PCMark04.

The improvements Intel has made to the core of the Pentium 4 may make the lower priced 640 and 650 CPUs an attractive proposition to those wanting to buy a new computer from Dell or Gateway or another OEM. EM64T, EIST, and Execute Disable Bit are cool new features. The lower operating temperatures on both the 660 and 3.73 GHz EE would seem to indicate that Intel has worked on the thermal problems that the Prescott core has been famous for.

At the end of the day, the new CPUs probably won't find a soft spot for the high-end gamer. Many of the new features in the 6xx core have equivalents on the AMD platform already (Cool N Quiet, AMD's 64-bit instructions). Plus, the next step is dual cores later this year. If you have a decent Intel or AMD CPU, you might as well wait for the new dual core CPUs to release. At that point, performance should markedly increase as well as incorporate the new features of the 6xx series.