Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 review

Core 2 Duo should also put to rest another criticism lobbied against Intel: that its chips are power-hungry, heat-generating behemoths. System builders had to go to great lengths--more cooling fans, larger heat sinks--to keep the chips safely running. Borrowing from Intel's laptop chips, the Core 2 Duo desktop processors require less power to run and, therefore, put out less heat. You can read more about the improved thermals in either of the full reviews, where you'll also find performance charts that show how the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 stack up against AMD's two top chips, the Athlon 64 FX-62 and the Athlon 64 X2 5000+.

We expect to see similar performance from the three chips we've yet to test and review. We'd be surprised to see much of a gap in performance between the E6700 and the E6600, since the only difference between the two is clock speed. There might be a bigger jump down in performance when you go from the E6600 to the E6400, because not only is the lower-end chip clocked slower, but it also features half the L2 cache. We expect to test these other three chips soon to give you the full rundown of the entire Core 2 Duo family. But if the first two chips are any indication, any of the Core 2 Duo processors will be an attractive option next time you're in the market for a PC, regardless of your budget.