Intel has quietly rolled out the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 965, its anticipated upgrade to the gaming-oriented CPU family that ups the clock speed to 3.73GHz. Due in Q2, the part is already making appearances on the chip giant's website.

In other respects, the new chip matches the previous top-of-the-range PEE processor, the 3.46GHz 955. The new part supports a 1066MHz frontside bus clock frequency, each core has 2MB of L2 cache, it's fabbed at 65nm, it has Virtualisation Technology, HyperThreading, support for Windows XP Service Pack 2's 'no execute' anti-virus technique, and has 64-bit addressing.

The 965 may prove short-lived. According to recent Intel roadmaps, the chip will be joined in Q3 by a 'Conroe'-based version of unknown clock speed. The roadmap doesn't show any 'Presler'-based PEEs from Q4 onwards.

The 955 is currently down on Intel's price list as costing $999, as is the previous-generation 840, and we'd expect the new model to be priced at that kind of level. ®