Conroe ends Pentium era

Intel has unveiled 10 new processors based on its new Core architecture which, as we revealed last month, has regained the performance lead from AMD.

The new range – Core 2 Duo – marks the end of the Pentium era, both in branding and design. There are five new desktop processors codenamed Conroe, and five mobiles codenamed Merom. All have dual cores.

The Meroms could have the greatest effect in the long run because they should be able to give the emerging (and widely under-rated) class of ultra-mobile PCs a lot of computing power with no extra drain on the batteries. 

No prices were available for the five Meroms as we went to press, which were expected to be available in late August. They clock between 1.66GHz and 2.33GHz, with a 667MHz front-side bus (FSB). The fastest three (the T7200, T7400 and T7600) have a 4MB Level 2 (L2) cache; the other two (the T5500 and T5600) have 2MB.

The Conroe chips all have a 1,066MHz FSB. The most expensive is the 2.93GHz T7600 at £536, a special Extreme Edition for gamers, which scored 7,404 in our PCmark test – the highest yet.

Next in performance come the 2.66GHz E6700 at £284, and the 2.4GHz E6600 at £170. They all have 4MB L2 cache.

The remaining two Conroes, the 2.13GHz E6400 and the 1.86GHz E6300, cost £120 and £98 respectively, and have 2MB of cache. Prices are converted from dollars and are subject to change.

PCW Labs test results for the new range are here, reviews of a number of machines using them are at here, and Marc Delehanty’s review of the chips themselves is here.

Intel rival AMD plans to launch quad core versions of its Opteron server chip early next year, which will be pin-compatible with its dual core. Intel said it will launch quad cores by the end of this year.