Intel Corp. has launched what president and CEO Paul Otellini calls "simply the best processors in the world" -- the long-awaited Core 2 Duo CPUs that replace the Pentium's aging NetBurst design with an all-new Core microarchitecture. In fact, says Intel, the desktop versions of the dual-core chip deliver up to a 40 percent increase in performance while being 40 percent more energy-efficient.

The 65-nanometer-process, 291-million-transistor Core 2 Duo has either 2MB or 4MB of Advanced Smart Cache -- Level 2 cache implemented not as half and half for the two processor cores but shared and dynamically allocated as needed. A 14-stage pipeline with Wide Dynamic Execution lets each core complete up to four instructions simultaneously, while Smart Memory Access hides memory latency to optimize the use of available bandwidth and Advanced Digital Media Boost effectively doubles the speed of SSE multimedia instructions. Core 2 Duos support Intel's EM64T 32/64-bit capability as well as Intel Virtualization Technology and Active Management Technology for IT managers.

Desktop processors with a 1066MHz front-side bus and 4MB of cache include the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X8600 (2.93GHz with overclocking support; $999 in 1,000-unit OEM quantities); 2.66GHz Core Duo E6700 ($530); and 2.4GHz model E6600 ($316). The 2.13GHz Core Duo E6400 ($224) and 1.86GHz model E6300 ($183) have 2MB of cache.