A unique engineering sample of the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme 4GHz Edition 980 discovered after 20 years

A rare thing has appeared on Reddit an engineering sample of the Intel Pentium processor Extreme 980 Edition, whose existence had not previously been officially confirmed. According to the owner, nicknamed diegunguyman, this dual-core chip with Hyper-Threading support operates at a frequency of 4.0 GHz and is based on the architecture Presler — the final evolution of a failed line NetBurst.

The processor is not recognized correctly in CPU-Z due to the specifics of validating such samples, and the only markings on the lid are the frequency and model name written in marker. The Reddit community suggests that this is the so-called Employee Loaner Chip — a sample that was issued to Intel employees for testing and development, and such samples are even rarer than the classic engineering versions (ES).

The processor's history is closely tied to the dramatic end of the NetBurst era. Despite ambitious goals to achieve high frequencies, the architecture encountered thermal and energy efficiency limitations, which prevented them from realizing their potential. Around 2005–2006, Intel began a strategic turnaround: the company abandoned NetBurst and switched to 2 Core Duo, developed in an Israeli laboratory in Haifa. A new approach aimed at Energy efficiency, allowed Intel to regain its leadership from AMD, whose products were then actively developing.