Jason Dunn
07-28-2006, 06:03 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060727comp.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060727comp.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Intel Corporation today unveiled 10 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo and Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processors for consumer and business desktop and laptop PCs and workstations, reshaping how computers perform, look and consume power—and most importantly—transform how people use them. "The Core 2 Duo processors are simply the best processors in the world," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. "Not since Intel introduced the Pentium® processor has the industry seen the heart of the computer reinvented like this. The Core 2 Duo desktop processor is an energy-efficient marvel, packing 291 million transistors yet consuming 40 percent lower power, while delivering the performance needed for the applications of today and tomorrow." The highly anticipated processor family already has very broad support with more than 550 customer system designs underway—the most in Intel's history. Ultimately, tens of thousands of businesses will sell computers or components based on these processors."</i><br /><br />In the world of boxing, there are body-blows where the hit hurts your opponent slowly but surely, and there are the haymaker punches aimed at the head where one hit can change the course of a fight. This is Intel's haymaker punch - for the past three years or so, they've been on the ropes against AMD, constantly losing the battle for processor performance. An Israeli team came up with the Pentium M design a few years back, and when Intel realized they were melting circuits trying to push the ancient Pentium 4 architecture to 4 Ghz, they transformed the direction of the company's CPU line and focused everything on evolving the Pentium M design...and now we have an impressive line of new CPUs. Early indications are that these CPUs are monsters, beating AMD across the board - but until I read a review I trust with final shipping hardware, I'll withhold judgment on that.<br /><br />I will say, however, that this is an impressive launch of CPUs - the high end Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor X6800, running at 2.93 Ghz on a 1066 mhz bus and boasting a massive 4 MB of cache looks like a monster CPU that I'd love to get my hands on. The thought of spending $999 USD on a CPU is sickening though, so I'll probably have my eye on an Intel® Core™2 Duo processor E6600, which clocks in at 2.4 Ghz and still features that beefy 4 MB of cache. The line-up of mobile processors is equally impressive. The one down side in all this though is that, of course, these CPUs require all-new chipsets, so my Shuttle SD11G5 can't work with any of them. Oh Intel, how you love to abandon your customers and the investments they make in hardware. :roll: