Kentsfield - Worth waiting a little longer?

Blue|Fusion

So I just stumbled upon some good reads about the upcoming Core 2 Quad processors Intel is planning to release in November. Tom's Hardware has a good review on it here.

I've been planning to upgrade to to the Core 2 Duo E6700 around Thanksgiving, but am now relunctant to as 4 cores sounds like a lot of fun. Upon reading all the tech specs and reviews, it seems like this is pretty much the Pentium D was to the Pentium 4 - two cores glued together on one die. This still offers performance beyond that of the Core 2 Duo, however, it still no longer has the shared L2 cache between the 2 Conroe cores. The Conroe cores themselves do have the 4MB shared L2 cache, though. Another nice thing is it's supposed to run at an FSB of 1333MHz as opposed to 1066MHz.

I'm not looking into performance processors so much for gaming (although I do still game Smile

), but I need to do a lot of compiling of C and C++ software on here so the faster the better.

Also, I've been trying to find any sort of expected prices for these quad-core chips, but can't fiind anything. Anyone have any idea how much these things are going to cost when they come out?

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

FYI - If you wait for the latest/greatest CPU from their announcments, might as well never upgrade. Especially since Intel announced the other day that within 5 years, they are planning to release 80 core CPU's.

Get the best you can afford at the time, when you need it. Regardless of what will be out "soon".