Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 review

You will need to excuse Intel if it's seen gloating over its new Core 2 Duo processors. Ever since dual-core desktop processors arrived on the scene last year, Intel has taken a backseat to rival AMD. Our own tests proved it, and it wasn't hard to find other Web sites reporting the same thing: the Athlon 64 X2 chips were clearly superior to Intel's Pentium D 800- and 900-series chips. Well, AMD's dominating run has come to a screeching halt with today's release of the Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

We've tested the top two chips, the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the 2.67GHz Core 2 Duo E6700, and were blown away by the performance they turned in. Rounding out the line are the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 ($316), the 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo E6400 ($224), and the 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6200 ($183). Like the top two chips, the E6600 features 4MB of unified L2 cache; the bottom two chips serve up a single 2MB block. All five chips feature a 1,066MHz frontside bus and operate on the Socket LGA775 interface.

The $530 Core 2 Duo E6700 looks especially sweet; it won our Editors' Choice award for delivering near the performance of the $999 Extreme X6800 for roughly half the cost. Compared to AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62, the Core 2 Duo E6700 turned in better or near equal results on all of CNET Labs' benchmarks. AMD price cuts are expected soon (we'll update this page accordingly once they are announced), but for now, the E6700 offers the best price-performance ratio of any desktop chip on the market.