Looking back, quad-core processors have had quite the run already. Intel's first quad-core CPU, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was released almost three years ago, with the much more popular Q6600 following up months later at a rather steep $850. As you may recall it was quite the luxury then to have one of these at your disposal.
AMD came to market with their own quad-core solution a year later, marking the release of the first Phenom X4 processors. Though in all fairness, it took them about one more year to get things going right.
Today we find ourselves with very different and diversified offerings from both companies, that are not only cheaper but also significantly faster. Just take for example AMD's Phenom II X4 945 that can be purchased for as little as $170, not to mention Intel's most recent release, the Core i5 750, which is meant to crush its competitors offering top notch performance at the $199 price point.
Very interesting. Thanks Nitin. My experience with my stock Q6600 is not very exciting. My comparable AMD duo core performs just as well. Maybe it's because I do not use a lot of programs that make use of the quad capabilities.
I still think that an SSD as OS disk (especially with Windows7) is a much better investment for boosting performance. You need to buy a lot of processing power to match that.
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Mainstream Quad-Core CPU Performance Comparison
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