Conclusion

We wrote about how impressive we thought Conroe would be after we got a pretty decent look at it during E3 this year. Simply put, we figured the performance it offered would be the best thing to happen to the CPU world in quite some time. We also named it as probably the main reason that Intel’s influence on E3 made them the clear Best of Show in our eyes. And it sure is nice being right. After having a good long week with these processors, we can say definitively that they are the highest performing chunks of silicone we have ever used.

And now to mention something we’ve been holding off on for the entire review, prices. While price charts had been posted on several websites about a full month ago, those were largely speculative. We can now present to you the full and official pricing charts, along with our final analysis.



If the overclocking results we were able to achieve in our tests are any indication at all of the ability of the final retail products, we would say without a second thought that the E6600 is far and away the best choice for those who want to pick up a new Core 2 Duo processor. That is of course, only if you plan on overclocking. If you don’t want to overclock, either because you don’t know how or you are too scared to, then the choice is also clear: the Core 2 Duo E6700 at $530. In our tests, we only found one big advantage for the X6800, and that advantage effects only the overclocking aspect of the processor. The performance differences between the X6800 and the E6700 were, in our mind, not nearly enough to justify paying double the amount of money for the Core 2 Extreme.

This is not to say that the Core 2 Extreme is not a superb product. At stock speeds, it is, or that is to say it will be at time of launch, most definitely, the single fastest processor publically available. For those with astronomical budgets that want the absolute fastest rig possible, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the best that money can buy. And it is for that reason that we have no choice, not that we didn’t want to, but to give it our Editor’s Pick Award.

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 – Extreme High-End Champion
Even with our infatuation and general state of awe about the X6800, we truly feel that the real story here lies in the E6700. After effortlessly overclocking the processor by 800MHz, something we’ve never even come close to doing that easily before, we can only help but wonder what this thing is capable of. For $530, you can pick one of these up for about the same price as AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 4800+, a processor that the E6700 has no problems beating at even stock speeds.

We simply cannot express enough how impressed we are with these new Intel processors. It is likely that everything you have heard is totally true. The processors are as fast as everyone says they are. They overclock as well if not better than people say they do. The only thing left now is for them to be released, so the masses can benefit from the product that has once again put Intel back on top of the processor market.