This year has been an exciting year for Intel, thanks to the success of their Core 2 Duo processor series which also sparked the idea for the world’s first quad-core processor. There was a great deal of hype surrounding the Conroe architecture, which the Core 2 Duo is based upon, well before it was even released. During September this year the Core 2 Duo was officially unleashed upon the world, and the results were staggering. The E6700, which is still the flagship Core 2 Duo processor, wiped the floor with any and all existing processors. The pricing for these new Intel processors was also very competitive, forcing AMD to greatly reduce the retail value of all their processors.

As the year 2006 draws very close to an end, Intel will go out with the E6300, E6400, E6600 and E6700 processors representing their Core 2 Duo lineup. That said, Intel plans to greatly expand their Core 2 Duo series in 2007 by introducing at least eight new processors. Surprisingly, just two of these new processors will be clocked higher than the existing E6700. The new E6800 and E6850 processors will be clocked at 2.93GHz and 3.00GHz, while the new E6750 will still operate at 2.66GHz. The rest of the processors are simply designed to strengthen the Core 2 Duo family in numbers, rather than in performance.

The Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 and E6420 for example, are going to be alternatives to the E6300 and E6400, with the only difference being that the new versions will feature the 4MB L2 cache rather than the 2MB L2 cache. This means the E6320 and E6420 should cost a little bit more than the E6300 and E6400 given the larger L2 cache. However according to many sources, both the E6300 and E6320 will retail for just $160 US in the second quarter of 2007. While the E6420 and E6400 will be priced at just $180 US in the second quarter of 2007, which is the same price the original E6300 initially retailed for in 2006.

So the E6320 and E6420 are basically just going to replace the already existing E6300 and E6400 processors. Given there is said to be no price difference, yet the E6320 and E6420 feature the full 4MB L2 cache, there will be no reason to buy either the E6300 or E6400 in the second quarter of 2007. Moving up the scale we have the popular E6600 and of course the E6700 processors. Now it is said that there will be an E6550, E6540 and E6750 appearing some time next year, which will operate on the new 1333MHz FSB (Front Side Bus) along with the E6850. Other than the FSB frequency boost the only other difference between the E6600 and E6550, is the clock frequency. While the E6600 works at 2.40GHz the new E6550 will run at 2.33GHz.

However around the same time as the 1333MHz FSB processors appear, such as the E6550, E6750 and E6850, so too will some new Intel chipsets. The P35 chipset for example, will support the new 1333MHz FSB using either DDR2-800 or DDR3-1066 memory. Given that these new Core 2 Duo processors are moving from the 1066MHz FSB to the 1333MHz FSB, using memory clocked at 1066MHz makes more sense. These new 1333MHz FSB processors are quite close now and will be launched within the new few months!

What is interesting is the E6600 and E6550 match up. The E6600 that we all know and love comes clocked at 2.40GHz using a 9x clock multiplier on the 1066MHz FSB. The E6550 on the other hand will use a much lower 7x clock multiplier with the 1333MHz FSB to achieve a total clock frequency of just 2.33GHz. This means depending on how much difference the higher 1333MHz FSB makes, the E6600 could be faster than the upcoming E6550 due to its higher operating frequency.

With so many new and upcoming Core 2 Duo processors that we know of, building an Intel gaming system next year could be tricky business. Given there is very little difference between the upcoming processors and the ones we have here today, the Core 2 Duo line-up is sure to become much more complex. That said, we took a look at the Core 2 Duo processors sitting around the office and quickly realized that all of them were capable of running at the same specifications of the upcoming processors. While we obviously could not reproduce DDR3 memory performance, we could match the exact frequency, cache and front side bus specifications of the upcoming processors.