Intel announced it will  to launch its new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor next week. 

The chip was first announced at the Fall Intel Developer Forum in September, and widely viewed as a response to Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon 64 and Athlon FX launch the following week.

The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is a reconfigured Xeon server chip designed to work in a desktop, analysts said. It will come with 2Mbytes of Level 3 cache, just like Intel's Xeon chips, and will make its debut at a clock speed of 3.2GHz.

High-end gamers are the primary target for the chip, and PC companies will have models ready go to as of Monday's launch, the source said.

Pricing information was not immediately available, but the chip is expected to be Intel's most expensive desktop processor by a significant margin.

The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is expected to carry the performance banner for Intel until the launch of Prescott, the 90-nanometer version of the Pentium 4.