Earlier this year, Intel unleashed their Conroe line of processors aimed towards the desktop PC market. After lagging behind AMD for quite some time, Conroe gave Intel the chance to pull ahead in terms of performance and cost. In the end, Conroe is a testament to how more efficient planning and design could impact the final performance of any product. To us 2006 is known as a year in which Intel has made one of their largest ever comebacks.

In recent years, Intel has greatly changed the focus of their processors. Just a little while back, one of the most popular trends for CPU manufacturers was increasing the operating frequency of their processors. As Intel blazed on faster and faster in terms of clock speed, they reached a point where they could not increase the performance of their most recent architecture of that time (Netburst) by the traditional means of increasing the operating frequency. Because of high energy consumption, Netburst based CPUs emitted large amounts of thermal heat and thus required additional cooling in order to keep them running properly. Although Intel kept the architecture alive as long as they could, they finally ended it with the release of the last Netburst based processor, the 3.73 GHz Pentium EE 965.

Intel seems to have learned a couple of lessons from their Netburst failure. For one, they changed their processor branding method in the later portion of Netburst’s life, showing that Intel didn’t place as much focus on operating frequency as they used to. In addition, for their successive architecture AMD began focusing on reducing two major characteristics: thermal output and power consumption. Both of these qualities go hand in hand. Increased power consumption results in increased thermal dissipation, while decreased power consumption results in lower thermal dissipation. With large corporations and home users beginning to see the need for more power efficient components, energy efficiency has become a key issue for both Intel and AMD. This is where the fork in the road came for Intel and AMD. How would they increase performance while decreasing power efficiency? The answer was Dual-Core processors.

The first Dual-Core solutions began appearing for retail back in the Spring of 2005. Intel launched off their Dual-Core solutions with the Pentium D 800 series while AMD started off with their Athlon 64 X2 processors. AMD and Intel also launched off Dual-Core server series. Intel had their Xeon DP server processors while AMD had their Opteron server CPUs. Dual-Cores have allowed users to greatly benefit in programs that are multi-threaded. It has also allowed users to run multiple CPU intensive programs at the same time.

The market has come a long way from where it used to be. We are now at a point at which Dual-Core CPUs are available to a large amount of consumers. Currently, the most economic Dual-Core processor is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. It is available at a price of 152 U.S.D. With low figures like this, Dual-Core CPUs are much more cost effective than what they used to be.

As we all know, technology moves fast. As such, Intel and AMD have now set their eyes on Multi-Core processors. In the course of the next six months, we will be seeing Quad-Core solutions appear on the market. The first of these solutions is the Quad-Core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700, codenamed Kentsfield. Kentsfield is a solution that has two Dual-Core Conroe die in the same processor, so basically, it can be considered a Dual-Dual-Core processor.

The “Extreme” at the end of the processor name indicates that Kentsfield is aimed towards the high-end sector of the processor market. As can be expected, since this is a processor that utilizes a very new technology, the price tag shows it. Starting at an MSRP of 999 USD, the Quad-Core QX6700 is not for the faint of heart. It is mostly aimed towards hardcore enthusiasts and for professionals that use CPU intensive applications that might be able to benefit from multiple cores.