Core i7 builder Intel Corporation has officially made some quite long-awaited changes to its Core 2 line-up. Intel's first move was to cut the price tag of its Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83 GHz) by a massive 40% from $530 to $316 (in 1000-unit tray quantities) followed by the introduction of four more processors.
Starting off small, the dual-core E7300, which has a core clock of 2.66 GHz and 3MB of L2 cache, has taken the $133 price point while the fastest dual-core around, the 3.33 GHz E8600 (1333 MHz FSB, 6MB L2 cache) entered the CPU battlefield carrying a $266 price tag. Also pirced ay $266 is the Q9400, a (45nm) quad-core CPU with a frequency of 2.66 GHz which features a 1333 MHz FSB and 6MB of L2 cache. Last but not least, the Q9650, which has a core clock of 3.0 GHz and 12MB of L2 cache, is sold by Intel for $316.
Later this month Intel should also release the 2.33 GHz Q8200 CPU.
Features and benefits
The high end just got higher. Introducing the latest additions to the Core 2 Quad family built using Intel's 45nm technology and hafnium-infused circuitry. These new processors deliver amazing performance and power efficiency. Whether it's encoding, rendering, editing, or streaming, make the most of your professional-grade multimedia applications with a PC powered by the Intel® Core™2 Quad processor. With four processing cores and up to 12MB of shared L2 cache¹ and up to 1333 MHz Front Side Bus, more intensive entertainment and more multitasking can bring a multimedia powerhouse to your house.
Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution, enabling delivery of more instructions per clock cycle to improve execution time and energy efficiency
Intel® Intelligent Power Capability, designed to deliver more energy-efficient performance
Intel® Smart Memory Access, improving system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth
Intel® Advanced Smart Cache, providing a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem. Optimized for multi-core and dual-core processors
Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost, accelerating a broad range of applications, including video, speech and image, photo processing, encryption, financial, engineering and scientific applications. Now improved even further on 45nm versions with Intel® HD Boost utilizing new SSE4 instructions for even better multimedia performance
Make highly threaded applications happy. Get in on the increasing number of highly threaded programs with quad-core technology from Intel. With four processing cores, an Intel Core 2 Quad processor-based PC will fuel more intensive entertainment and more media multitasking than ever.
source:intel.com
