Intel Leap's Further Ahead - New Announcements

Intel's PR department is in full swing this week with multiple announcements, product launches and "authorised leaks". AMD's sudden price cuts last week looks pretty dull in comparison especially when you're talking about improvements on the top performing CPUs that you can buy today and assuredly, tomorrow (45nm leaks).

Announced today is probably the final revision of 65nm Core 2 Duo's before its 45nm counterparts arrive. While the increase of the FSB to 1333Mhz is one of the major highlights of the new release, it fails to significantly improve overall performance. This is yet another testament that proves the sufficient capabilities of current memory bandwidths without the extra cost of on-die memory controllers. If anything the release of the CPU's with the new memory timings should prepare the industry for the rapid switch over to 45nm which will be at 1333Mhz. This is a clever move from Intel as it pro-actively entices its partners to adapt and ramp early and hopefully reduce prices just when Penryn arrives.

As expected the benchmark results for the QX6850 is not good for AMD's offering. AMD's top CPU's including the FX drops 2-3 levels, further down the comparison graphs. The longer and longer graphs are starting to annoy a lot of benchmarking sites as they struggle to make sure AMD's processors are included in the comparison. Soon, one chart would have to occupy an entire web page before you start to see an AMD bar right at the bottom. See recent example below (courtesy of the Intel-pumper Anand):