6. Of Intel and Apple Cores

This has certainly been the year of cores. Intel introduced its Core Duo line of dual processor CPUs. Then in almost a blink of an eye the company quickly shuffled in the Core 2 Duo line. Now, in the spirit of the-more-the-merrier, quad-core CPUs are flowing out of Intel. The other core, of course, is Apple's adoption, hook-line-and-sinker, of the Intel Core CPU line. That must have been a bitter pill for Apple diehards to swallow.

Intel and AMD dual core processors

We found decent performance improvements between Pentium and Core Duo equipped computers and between computers with Core Duo and Core 2 Duo CPUs. Tests by Intel and others of servers equipped with quad-core CPUs show significant improvements over Core 2 Duo performance. Additionally, Apple reports significant performance gains between its old line of PowerPC CPUs and the dual and quad core CPU lines. Drops in power requirements and in heat generation have also been a characteristic of the new Intel CPUs. So, all in all, the new chips have been most welcome.

But, as with other products that just keep comin', there has been no rest for the weary. You buy a Core Duo machine and it's obsolete in a few months. Core 2 Duo computers sell at the same prices as one's with Core Duo and that makes a lot of us madder than a guy with an exploding cell phone in his hip pocket.

Progress is nice, but, as with my friend and his little Sony UX180P, it's no fun to be left holding a bag of old technology just after you buy it. It's enough to make you shun the enthusiast's tendency to jump into a technology as soon as it appears. I guess you can be an enthusiast and just watch and then jump when it seems like the time is right. Of course, even if you wait, the next wave is likely to hit just as you commit to buying the last wave. If you love technology and like to let it run through your fingers and brain, there's no way to win this little standoff.

Two Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 FX CPUs

CPU maker AMD has been quieter than usual this year. But it's clear that this innovator is going to come roaring out of the shoot next year with more powerful multi-core products and maybe a technological first. AMD's purchase of graphics processor designer and manufacturer, ATI, gives us hope that we'll see CPUs with powerful graphics processors built in. On a less speculative note, it's sure that ATI's smarts will continue to focus on AMD chipset graphics. We might see some impressive surprises in that area next year and we'll surely see a bunch of new adapters with still more amazing graphics processors.

Related Articles:
Dual Core Processors for Low-Power, High-Performance Desktops
AMD's 4x4 Platform & Athlon 64 FX-70 - Brute Force Quad Cores
Two Quality Core 2 Duo Notebooks From Gigabyte: Which One Is For You?
Four Graphics Capable Notebooks Ready For Business
Game Over? Core 2 Duo Knocks Out Athlon 64