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Today is the day many of us have been anticipating for a long time now, today is the day that Intel finally officially announce their all new processor series. Largely known as the Conroe there are three variations of this processor, though all are designed on the same core architecture. In fact, this is the first time Intel has purposely designed a single, core architecture for all platforms. For example, the Conroe has been designed for desktop computers while the Merom is a notebook processor and the Woodcrest will take on the roll of a workstation/server processor. All of which are based on Intel's Core technologies, and all three are 64-bit-capable dual-core processors with shared enhancements.  The Conroe, or as it is now known the Core 2 Duo, is the Pentium replacement; this means for now we will no longer see the Pentium brand processors. This means the Pentium 5xx, 6xx and D series are now a thing of the past and there will never be another version of these processors. Although this is an exciting day for Intel and the industry, it is also a sad day as we say good-bye to one of the longest running and most successful processor brand names in history. Now that the farewells are over, let's open our arms and give the new Intel Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Extreme desktop processors a warm welcome! Possibly the biggest downfall of the latest Pentium processors was the thermal heat output, which was becoming ridiculous really. The new Conroe, Merom, and Woodcrest cores are designed to provide much more power, yet produce less heat and they achieve this by using less power. This means while offering notebook computers more grunt, the Merom will also extend battery life. Furthermore, while heat was an issue for the late model Pentium processors, noise also became a serious problem. However, given that the Conroe produces less heat you can now get use to the idea of using your computer without the ear-muffs. Probably the biggest question on the mind of those that have recently upgraded to an Intel Pentium D/EE processor is compatibility, will the new Conroe processors work with your existing platform? Well the good news is yes they will, worse case a BIOS/Firmware update may be required to support these new Intel desktop processors. This is great news for Intel users and it is great to see these powerful new processors still using the LGA775 platform, which is still relatively new anyway. The Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme are now the fastest Intel processors available and are much faster than the existing Pentium EE processor. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the Smart Cache and Wide Dynamic Execution technologies. Then there is the virtualization technology which is designed to maximize the processors multi-tasking performance. This is done by splitting the computer into numerous virtual systems, all of which can run different applications. This technology is so powerful that it could be possible to play a game on one, watch a movie on the other, host a web server on a third, run a database from a fourth and surf the Internet on another. Intel has provided us with the fastest Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors available at the time of release. These are the Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 processors, both of which feature a massive 4MB L2 Cache. The primary difference between these two processors is the clock speed at which they operate. Both utilize a 1066MHz FSB, though the Core 2 Extreme X6800 operates at 2.93GHz where as the Core 2 Duo E6700 runs at just 2.66GHz. There is also a Core 2 Duo E6600 which also features a 4MB L2 Cache and operates at 2.40GHz and it's probably going to be the best value option of the entire Core 2 Duo series. The Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 processors feature a shared 2MB L2 Cache and come clocked at 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz. There will also be an E4200 processor which will be a single core solution operating at 1.6GHz using an 800MHz FSB and a 2MB L2 Cache. The E means that the thermal design point (TDP) is rated to be somewhere between 55~75watts, which is quite low. The X means the TDP is greater than 75w and this is used to identify the Core 2 Extreme processors. I could go on and on for pages with all the information that Intel has provided, but since you probably are not all that interested lets move on to the more interesting benchmark results... |
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