It can be said that benchmarks are not always the best way to get a “feel” for a processor’s performance. And to be done at Intel’s own lab no less, doesn’t lead many to feel that they are allowing ExtremeTech to do the tests that they’d like to. Nevertheless, here is what they came up with…

It would be the understatement of the year to say that Intel’s next-generation CPU architecture, known as the “Core” microarchitecture and shipping in the desktop chip “Conroe” and notebook chip “Merom” is greatly anticipated. PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade have been holding off for weeks on the prospects that these new chips would be substantially faster and more energy efficient than anything else on the market today.

We got the chance to head down to Santa Clara and test the desktop chip, known as Core 2 Duo, under Intel’s supervision. Just as we did when we tested the Core 2 Extreme last month, we performed a series of benchmarks on machines set up by Intel. So don’t consider this a review. That will have to wait for the official launch, when we’ll have a slew of benchmarks run our own way on systems we built ourselves. Still, this is a pretty exciting peek at what kind of performance we can expect when the chips go on sale…. Source: ExtremeTech

[tags]update,performance,conroe,core 2 extreme,core 2 duo[/tags]