The Heir Apparent: Intel Core Duo T2600

Intel Core Duo T2600: This is Intel's current mobile top model and is far better than any Pentium 4 or Pentium D in terms of performance per Watt.

Core Duo is Intel's first step towards a new microarchitecture that will debut in Q3 2006. Its cornerstones are a wider instruction pipeline, larger cache, intelligent memory access, and a fusion of micro operations, macro operations and SSE enhancements (128 bit single cycle SSE). Intel claims to be able to outperform its competitor by 20% on a clock-to-clock basis, which initial benchmark results underscore. However, the performance numbers that can be found on the web are all based on Intel-assembled machines that could have been optimized: hybrid hard drive, tweaked memory options, and so on.