Intel's Core 2 Duo is picking up heat

The Intel Core 2 Duo is finally picking up heat after so many good reviews. For the first time in several years, Intel has a clear performance lead over AMD in a wide variety of benchmarks for office applications, games and other software. Back in February, before Intel had released details about the Core architecture used to build Conroe, Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms group, claimed that, in general, the Core architecture chips would deliver a 20 percent performance lead over comparable chips from Advanced Micro Devices. While it's hard to assemble an overall figure based on dozens of benchmark results, the Core 2 Duo meets that target in some areas and comes in shy of that figure in others. But its lead was clear in the minds of reviewers, who did not hold back their praise for Intel's new chip. On PC World's own benchmark, WorldBench, the E6700 processor outscored AMD's FX-62 processor by a substantial margin, and the gap was even wider between the FX-62 and the Core 2 Extreme. PC gamers, who have been solidly behind AMD's Athlon 64 processors almost since the day they were released, will have to rethink their stance based on some of the gaming benchmark figures, according to PCMag.com. Sharky's Extreme, another hardware review site, was equally impressed with the new Core 2 Duo chips. "The launch of the Core 2 processor line has hit the market with a bang, and offers up an incredible combination of performance and value, coupled with low heat and power specifications. These processors are so good, that it's difficult to highlight any real negatives." Anandtech, which was one of the sites that was granted access to a preproduction version of Conroe, declared that "Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 didn't lose a single benchmark in our comparison; not a single one." Even Intel's mainstream E6700 and E6600 processors beat AMD's highest-performing chip, the Athlon FX-62, in several benchmarks.