Dual-Core - the Best, Quad-Core – the Very Best?

Core 2 Duo offers absolutely stunning performance. According to PC magazine it is a “Jaw Droppingly fast” processor:

Besides, the momentum for this product was quite good. Within 60 days after the official launch Intel shipped over 5 million processors.

Overall, it was a very busy summer for Intel. Core 2 Duo launched over a number of segments delivering the world’s best and most energy-efficient performance. But could they do better? I bet you know the answer already: what is better than two cores? – Four cores!

As of today Intel has accelerated the schedule to Q4’06 from Q1’07. This is what will look like. The quad-core will first be targeted for the enthusiast or gamer segment of the marketplace. The initial desktop version will be called Core 2 Extreme and will ship in November. According to Intel with the 70% performance improvement compared with the predecessor Core 2 Extreme is currently the fastest single socket microprocessor on the planet.

In Q1 Intel will bring it down into the mainstream segment under the name of Core 2 Quad.

As a demonstration of the quad-core system in action we were offered an episode from Remedy game that ran on a falcon system built using Nvidia graphics, Intel quad-core processors running at 3.73GHz and apparently AGEIA physics. More systems with quad-core inside are coming in November and these will be the systems from the following partners: