HEXUS.net : Review : Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Prescott, 3.4GHz Northwood and 3.4GHz Northwood Extreme Edition : Page - 9/9: "The evil blot on the horizon is Intel's policy of gaining clock speed by lowering the CPU's work accomplished per clock cycle." Remember when the P4 came out and it was slower than the P3 clock for clock - well the Pentium 4 "prescott" is doing the same thing, they've increased the pipeline length so they can clock it to a higher MHz...