The Two Titans

Nvidia rules the current GPU arena. It just released the GeForce 8800GT at an awesome price point. AMD/ATI will be screwed for the Christmas rush if they don't release a better product in November.

Intel is king in the CPU arena. It will debut a smaller, efficient and technically superior Core 2 Duo next month:

Instead of producing MOSFET transistors inside the CPU via the conventional silicon-oxide technique in use since 1960, Intel now fabricates the transistors using a new High-K Dielectric technique. As a result, the Penryn core has improved over the previous CPU generation in several ways.

Read this:

We were amazed - in fact, couldn't believe our eyes - when we first measured the power consumption of the QX9650. We repeated our measurements several times to ensure their veracity and rule out errors on our part, but we kept coming up with the same result. In idle mode, with the CPU's four cores running at a reduced frequency of 2 GHz thanks to Intel's Speedstep technology, the meter only indicated 310 milliamperes. The system voltage lay at 12.216 Volts, which means that our 45 nm Penryn has a sensationally low power consumption of only 3.79 Watts.

Take a look at the chart here to see just how impressive that number really is. Such a powerful and power-efficient processor will be great for laptops.

Still, I'm holding out for Nehalem.

Comments

[Alex]

Yeah, the newer generations of Intel processors are amazing. Until a few months ago I was running a Pentium D 2.8GHZ - it ran at 45 degrees idle, and could reach as high as 68 degrees at full load. I then went and picked up a "Pentium Dual Core E2160" for about $90.

I currently have that processor overclocked to 3 ghz, which is 1.2 ghz higher than it's rated speed. And thanks to the fact that it's rated for such a low speed, I was able to overclock it by pumping up the bus speed to 330MHZ, giving me a rated FSB of over 1300 mhz and a memory speed of 1 ghz. That gives me better performance than any processor on the market, and the CPU STILL runs at only 12 degrees while idle, and 38 degrees under full load. They are simply phenomenal. A year ago I would never have believed that such a drastic improvement in processors would be possible in so short a time.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

After the Pentium III, Intel went down a horrible spiral. Their hot Pentium 4s and Ds were having their ass kicked by AMD Athlons. They recovered with the Core 2 Duo. The processor you bought closely resembles a C2D -- only with a lower FSB and cache. No question, it provides the best value with overclocking.

Intel is simply not bothering with releasing such processors with higher clock speeds since they have nothing to compete against! Their dominance in the last 18 months has been incredible and it will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

[Cafe Alpha]

My laptop got crushed in luggage, so I've got a Dell on the way with a 1.7GHz Athlon 64 X2 TK-53.

I'm hoping it's cooler than my Pentium M was, which had to run its fan whenever it went faster than 50%.

[SnoopyTheGoon]

Not bad at all. But it excites me not because of the laptops, rather because of the UMPC/PDA babies like this one:

http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_x7501.htm

Or this one:

http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htcshift.htm

Cheers.