From something spectacular a year ago, dual-core microprocessors are rapidly heading into the mainstream market and Intel Corp. is putting quite a lot of efforts into offering cost-effective dual-core microprocessors. According to media reports, the company is planning to introduce Intel Pentium D 915, 925 chips that will have similar characteristics to other Pentium D 900-series processors, but will not support virtualization technology.

If the slides that presumably come from Intel’s roadmap published by HKEPC web-site are to be believed, then Intel Corp. is intending to unveil its Intel Pentium D models 915 and 925 that will work at 2.80GHz and 3.0GHz core-clock speeds, utilize 800MHz quad pumped bus, sport 4MB of level two cache (2MB per core) as well as 64-bit and execute disable bit capabilities. Neither of the new chips support virtualization technology, but the model 925 features enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology (EIST).

The new Intel Pentium D chips are projected to be introduced in the third quarter of this year and will succeed the Intel Pentium D 805 processor, a dual-core chip introduced earlier in 2006 that retailed for about $150.

Intel’s Pentium D 805 chip worked at 2.80GHz and used 533MHz processor system bus, which did not allow it to become very popular among performance enthusiasts. Nevertheless, the processor could open the doors to “the dual-core” world to those, who may not have demand for performance-hungry computer games, but uses a multi-tasking a lot. The new Pentium D 915 and 925 processors are likely to become interesting solutions even for people starving for performance, as they feature higher-speed bus and larger caches, which are crucially important for multimedia applications.

Intel Corp. did not comment on the news-story.