Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz hyperthreading chips "like hen's teeth"

ROME WASN'T BUILT in a day, nor did hyperthreading enter the world of the desktop fully fledged with the launch of the Pentium 4 3.06GHz chip yesterday.

As we reported earlier this year, Intel could have enabled hyperthreading on every Northwood (.13 micron) chip it created but instead chose to fuse out the appropriate silicon cells of what is generally described as "the brains of a computer".

To test the viability of enabling hyperthreading, Intel distributed vast numbers of 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz Pentium 4s to its PC partners during August and September.

And now the hunt is on for engineering samples (ES) of the earlier hyperthreaded chips.

A thread at the OC forums debates whether these hyperthreaded chips need to be engineering samples or whether older chips can be HT enabled by using a pin modification. Overclockers have long been modifying pins on the Pentium 4 in order to increase the default voltage.

There's more on this at VR Zone.

Here's the thread.

This thread is worth a shufty, too. µ