14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has released a large range of processors over the past few months and the industry has been especially focused on the creation of products based on the company's new Core and Pineview chips. The Santa Clara company set the stage for newer and significantly better computers, both performance- and efficiency-wise, especially with its Pine Trail platform for mobile computing. Nevertheless, even though its new families of chips are in the spotlight, the chip maker hasn't been neglecting its older product lines. Intel has updated its product offer with three new LGA 775 chips.
The new central processing units are the Celeron E3400, the Pentium E6600 and the Core 2 Quad Q9500. The least pricey and least powerful among the new chips is the Intel Celeron E3400. This product is a dual-core processor with a frequency of 1.60 GHz, an L2 cache of 1MB and an FSB (front side bus) of 800 MHz. Being the least capable of the three, the chip is priced at only $53.
The second in this line is the more capable Intel Pentium E6600. This dual-core processor has a significantly higher clock, specifically of 3.06 GHz, and an L2 cache memory twice as large as that of the Celeron E3400 (2MB). The processor's FSB is set at 1066 MHz and the chip is priced at $84.
Completing the product offering is the significantly higher performing LGA 775 processor known as the Core 2 Quad Q9500. This processor has a clock frequency slightly lower than that of the Intel Pentium E6600, namely of 2.83 GHz, but, being a quad-core, it easily outperforms both it and the low-end Celeron E3400. Its FSB is set at 1333 MHz and its L2 cache memory is of no less than 6MB.
The three new chips are not the only change in the company's product offer, as the Santa Clara company has also reduced the prices of three of its existing chips. The E3300 now costs as little as $43, compared with the previous $53, and the E5400 has a price of $64 instead of $74. Finally, the E6500 costs only $74 instead of $84.