Core 2 Duo's desktop debut: three of the first PCs with Intel's new chips

Rich Brown, Senior Editor July 19, 2006

You can't actually purchase a PC with one of Intel's new Core 2 Duo chips in it until July 27, but Dell, Falcon Northwest, and Velocity Micro will be among the first vendors to offer them. Each provided us with a config it will start selling when Intel rings the bell: Dell's XPS 700 and Falcon Northwest's Mach V are on the heavyweight gaming powerhouse side and Velocity Micro's Vector GX Campus Edition is for the back-to-schoolers. As you can see by the review scores, we like what we've seen so far. Thanks largely to Intel's new chips, these PCs are all fast and quiet.

You'll notice that we haven't given any of these PCs an Editors' Choice award. That isn't an accident. The Dell XPS 700 might actually deserve one, but we want to see what the other vendors have to offer before we go handing out any ribbons. Same goes for the Velocity Micro. Its price-to-performance ratio is very competitive, but not only do we expect we'll see more $1,000 or so Core 2 Duo PCs, AMD has price cuts on the way for its competing Athlon 64 X2 chips. Sure, we'll see some crazy benchmark results from the multithousand-dollar systems, but we expect the budget PC market is also about to get extremely competitive.

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