Digital Home Thoughts: Quad-Core CPUs Now Being Shown: Intel Core 2 Quadro

"There is a fascinating element to this combination of multiple processing cores, a fast architecture and even more performance: The new Core 2 Quadro processors are out to beat the pants off everyone else in the x86 field and to extend Intel's lead over the competition. Check out the summit of the processor elite as we compare the upcoming Core 2 Quadro CPUs with Core 2 Duo/Extreme, Pentium Extreme Edition and the AMD Athlon 64 FX. Are there any limits to the performance frenzy? Even expert opinions are deeply divided, ranging from "more cores are absolutely necessary" to "why do I need something more than my five-year-old PC system?" Although the Core 2 quad-core processors are not expected to hit retail channels before October, Tom's Hardware Guide had the opportunity to examine several Core 2 Quadro models in the test labs. We would like to make it clear that these samples were not provided by Intel."



To quote the infamous Ron Burgundy, "By Odin's beard!". Quad cores - that's simply awesome! Video encoding with multi-processor aware applications would just crunch. And here's the most interesting part: I've read about some Core 2 Duo motherboards with early BIOS revisions that had options for turning on/off a feature that allowed applications, and the operating system itself, to see the CPU as being one giant core. The feature was apparently unstable, so Intel disabled it...but imagine what will happen when they get that to work. Data-crunching at effectively 11.72 Ghz (assuming the CPU can evenly slice the data processing four ways at 2.93 Ghz each way on a Core 2 Extreme Quadro) would be mind-numbingly fast. Bring it on! If nothing else, the Quadro's will push the price on the Core 2 Duo's down.