A New Beginning - Core 2 Duo Processors

Finally the day has come. Intel officially has launched the much-awaited Core 2 Duo product, which is based on the Conroe processor. Earlier we had the opportunity to see an engineering sample-core 2 Duo E6700 in a system developed by Intel. However, at present Intel’s newly developed core2Duo and Core 2Extreme processor is available to buy. And the company finally allowed us to bring out our own independent benchmark on systems developed and configured by ourselves. Intel is going to release total five types of different processor. The first one is designed especially as a desktop processor based on the core architecture. This processor works with maximum speed for which Intel is quite known?
 
Of all the processors designed by Intel, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest, which comes clocked at a mere 2.93 GHz with 4MB of L2 cache. There are also two other chips, which come with4MB L2 cache. They include the Core 2 Duo E6700 and the core 2 Duo E6600.They come clocked at 2.67GHz and 2.40GHz respectively.

Intel has not yet disclosed every detail of its 2MB Core 2Duo chips because of more fanfare about Conroe. The 2 MB chips are code-named as Allendale which includes- Core 2 Duo E6400 and E6300.These chips are clocked at only 2.13GHz and1.86GHz respectively.

Working of Intel’s new Core architecture: C2D- this number seems to be very impressive. The most important thing is that what exactly it offers. Why shall we move so fast to Core 2 duo platform? Intel is promoting Core 2 Duo as the most power efficient processor. In addition to this, the processor provides better performance than the Pentium- 4 and Pentium- D chips. Moreover, the Smart memory Access has been designed to lower memory latency, which helps to improve data access. “Memory disambiguation”, an important feature of this processor which allows the execution cores to preload instruction that is about to be executed before the earlier instruction finished. This feature is based on a set of intelligent algorithm, which does not work in every circumstance though the processor has been designed to take less time for idling and more time for processing data. An improved memory pre-fetching system with L1 and L2 cache helps to improve the rate of availability of correct data. However, Intel has lowered the TDP to 65W on the desktop part, which is not very impressive. Still, the processor has enough marketing material.

If we start with the latest system that Intel has developed for us. The processor is clocked at 2.67GHz and it should be known as the E6700 when it hits retail. As we have guessed the machines had an Intel-branded motherboard and as the Core 2 Duo processors operate at a 1066MHz front side bus, the motherboard of choice was the Intel D975XBX. This is a top-of-the-range model from Intel had also installed 1GB of Corsair DDR 2 memory, which was clocked at 800MHz and set to run at 4-4-4-12 timings. If with this Added a couple of ATI Radeon X1900XTs in a Cross-Fire setup you will get a decent machine.