Quard core FINALLY!!

Hi everyone the quad core has finally been released. This time Intel has taken the leap after losing to AMD in the Duo core war. The new chip is called "Kentsfield" this sounds weird right compared to the core 2 duo u r listening now. PCs are rumored to increase 70 percent. Intel originally planned to launch the CPU in Q1 of 2007, but informed press and analysts during the Q2 earnings conference call that it will be introducing the chip for a late 2006 availability.

Details about the chip have been scarce. So far, Intel has declined to release specifications and performance data, but industry sources recently indicated that the processor will be clocked with 2.67 GHz and run on a 1066 MHz FSB. Since the CPU combines two Conroe dual-core chips, the chip will carry 2 x 4 MB L2 cache; Kentsfield will be a Conroe "drop-in" chip and work with the 965 and 975 series chipsets on today's Core 2 Duo motherboards. Intel is expected to offer press and analysts first access to the quad-core CPU at the Fall IDF, which will be held from 26 - 28 September in San Francisco. Today, it's AMD that's struggling. Once seen as lean and swift compared with the aging Intel juggernaut, AMD is now looking somewhat anemic. The Sunnyvale, California, CPU company isn't giving up the fight easily. AMD slashed prices of its own processor line when Intel launched Core 2, and the typical AMD system tends to be somewhat less expensive—if also lower-performing—than similarly configured Intel Core 2 systems. But price cuts have hurt AMD's margins, and the last thing the company wants is to become a second-tier supplier, as it was back in the days when it was perceived only as a second source for Intel-compatible CPUs.

Kentsfield, which industry sources refer to as "Core 2 Quadro," arrived as a 2.67 GHz version with a 266 MHz/1066 MHz FSB. The test engineers were able to adjust the FSB to 1333 MHz - which is still supported by the 975X chipset - and overclock the CPU by about 25%. The benchmarks were conducted with clock speeds ranging from 2.0 GHz to 3.33 GHz.

Kentsfield easily shattered previous benchmarks records and highlighted its horsepower especially in threaded applications such as audio and video processing. The chip was able to set new record levels in traditional benchmarks such as 3DMark 05 and 3DMark 06 as well. Overall, Kentsfield turned out to be about twice as fast as the Pentium EE 965, while consuming about the same power. And while power consumption is up significantly from the Core 2 Extreme, the chip still undercuts the Pentium EE 840.

The Kentsfield's four processing cores may or may not speed up your productivity because some applications aren't programmed to take advantage of the extra cores.

You will see a slight improvement with photo editing software like Photoshop. In a Photoshop CS2 benchmark that converted 150 photos from nine mega-pixels to .8 mega-pixels, the Core 2 Quad was about 6% faster than the Core 2 Duo E6700 and took 88 seconds versus 94 seconds.