Intel Core 2 Duo Processors

Intel® Core™2 Duo T5500 (1.66 GHz) and T5600 (1.83GHz) Processors w/2M L2 Cache and the Intel Core2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz), T7400 (2.16GHz), T7600 (2.33GHz) Processors w/4M L2 On-die cache, all with 667MHz FSB, are shipping now.

The big advantage Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors provide is 64-bit software support. Added to that good news is that Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors are the same price and have virtually the same power usage as current Intel® Core™ Duo Processors so now that Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors are shipping in mass quantity there will be no reason not to buy them.

The latest notebooks, DELL, HP, ALIENWARE, COMPAQ models using the Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors are all Windows Vista ready.

Benchmarks for the Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors indicate that they are approximately 5-15% faster for very CPU intensive applications in Windows XP, with most of that benefit obtained when using video and audio encoding applications. In business applications there is virtually no difference at all. Windows Vista is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Windows Vista x64 and at LEAST SP1 or even SP2 will be released before we adopt 64-bit computing.