Intel Quietly Intros 3.5GHz Core 2 Duo E8700

Santa Clara, California-based leading chip maker Intel is expected to announce a new desktop computer processor, part of the company's Core 2 Duo family of processors. The new desktop CPU has already been leaked on the company website, yesterday, after which it has been removed. However, the web page was available just enough to provide us with some details regarding the technical specifications of Intel's upcoming dual-core processor.

 

Built as a 45nm part, the upcoming Core 2 Duo, dubbed E8700, is going to up the ante as far as Intel's Core 2 Duo lineup is concerned, as it will provide a factory-set core speed of 3.5GHz. Aside from that, the E8700 CPU is featured with cache memory size of 6MB, while the front-side bus has been set at 1333MHz. According to the details that have been made available, the new processor has a thermal design power of 65W.

 

From the available specifications we can say that the upcoming E8700 is actually an overclocked version of the company's E8600 model, which boasts the same cache and FSB, but has a clock speed of “just” 3.33GHz. The upcoming model will also boast support for virtualization and 64-bit architecture, as well as the use of Intel's SpeedStep technology. On the downside, the Core 2 Duo E8700 isn't going to be featured with the TurboBoost technology.

 

There are no official details regarding the chip's pricing and availability, but it appears that this model has already been listed on the website of an online European retailer. It is on digicom-it.be where Intel's upcoming Core 2 Duo processor is listed at a price tag of €259.90. The aforementioned website also provides a few more technical specifications, including the list of supported instructions, namely MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1.

 

The new Core 2 Duo desktop CPU could be Intel's alternative to the upcoming AM3-supporting dual-, triple-, and quad-core processors, which will be launched by the Sunnyvale, California-based AMD.