Intel Core 2 Duo Links

Today is the official start of the media blitz for Intel's latest Core 2 Duo chip, also known by its development name of Conroe. Every site that covers anything tech is discussing it today, and I've been flipping between sites to glean all the info I can about it. You can rest assured that our entire TechNudge staff is salivating for one of these. Bill will have one in his sweaty palms in about a month to let us all know if all the hype is true.

In summary, this is the most important chip in quite some time. The Core 2 Duo is notable in that it has dual cores, and a shared 4 MB cache. This is supported by a blazing 1066 MHz front side bus. Intel also dropped the Net Burst architecture, and reduced the power consumption. In short, they went away from Pentium 4 designs, and built on the Centrino (Pentium M) designs. The prey became the predator as Intel took a page from AMD's playbook. Clock speeds are modest at this point, which means there is considerable room to scale performance in the months ahead. The cache is providing a lot of the muscle apparently.

What is also so significant is that these new chips are blowing AMD away on every benchmark. Even the FX-62 for over a grand is having trouble keeping up with a Core 2 Duo for half the price. Lately when a new architecture is introduced, it is faster at some things, but not all. For perfomance enthusiasts, the Core 2 Duo even overclocks well in many cases (see the Anand Tech article below). There hasn't been a new architecture this dominant since the introduction of the Athlon 64, and that was ages ago.

AMD should be worried. They're either being tight lipped about their counter move, or they don't have much. Their 4 x 4 initiative plans to put two dual core chips on a motherboard. That may get them some brute force performance, but is not practical for competing on cost. I doubt that many will afford two FX-62's on a motherboard. AMD will most certainly have to drastically cut prices, and it doesn't look like they still will be competitive.

Congrats to Intel for making a great new chip. For quite some time, I have not really been too enthused about their products. The 805 and 820 were low cost, but not spectacular. The Core 2 Duo sets a new standard for chip performance.

I've provided links to all the info I could find on the Core 2 Duo today, so browse and see what I'm talking about.

CNET
MadShrimps
GD Hardware
PC World
Tweaktown
Plant X64
PC Mag
AnandTech
Extreme Tech
Tom's Hardware

--Jonas