Intel to pay $15 per user to settle benchmark manipulation lawsuit

Companies fudging benchmark scores isn’t new, although it seems that after nearly a decade and a half later, Intel has been accused of fudging the benchmark scores of the Pentium 4 processors back in the early 2000s. A class action lawsuit has recently been filed against Intel on behalf of those who bought an Intel Pentium 4-based PC in the US from November 20th 2000 to June 30th 2002.

As hard as it may be to believe now, Advanced Micro Devices once presented a serious threat to Intel’s dominance of the PC microprocessor market. However, if you invested in a first-generation Pentium 4 processor (codenamed Willamette) between November 20, 2000 and June 30, 2002, you may not have particularly fond reminiscences of AMD’s heyday. Your recollections of that time may very well be of your new Pentium 4 chip living up neither to your expectations nor to the impressive “independent third-party” benchmarks that Intel released to reviewers in the lead up to Pentium 4’s launch.