This is my first stab at blogging!

Heard the good news about the latest Intel Processor? I have been waiting for this processor for a long time. The conroe (for desktops) and merom (for mobile platforms) are out. I am so glad that Intel finally did something new and innovative, lessons mostly learnt from AMD. The processor has better performance/watt. I love having laptops with the latest "stuff" and so usually end up purchasing one every year. But this time around I held off the though just to buy a laptop with Intel Core 2 Duo. Intel announced the new processors on July 27, but looks like the desktops/laptops equipped with this latest processors won't be out until perhaps end of August. Even then they will be in limited numbers I guess. Interesting to note that Intel announced the mobile version at the same time as the desktop version since initially the roadmap looked like the merom would be released towards the end of August.

Here are a few links proving that this new processor is much faster than the latest AMD processor and yet consumes lesser power.
Game Over? Core 2 Duo Knocks Out Athlon 64
THG Tuning Test: Core 2 Extreme vs. Athlon 64 FX-62

But this is by no means to say Intel is better than AMD. AMD did not yet make any big steps except than AM2. Intel still has to get the memory controller right. With AM2 socket AMD has integrated memory controller using DDR2 memory and provide almost double the bandwidth than the extreme version of the Intel Core 2. There are rumors that Intel might follow AMD style memory controller. If that happens Intel can really have an advanced processor. I am still debating whether to buy a laptop with napa platform in the next couple of months or wait for almost another year for the santa rosa platform which seems to be very promising with it's higher FSB clock rate of 800 MHz, lower power consumption and 801.11n WLAN chipset. Time will tell! But for now time does tell us that Intel's NetBurst architecture will be history and for all the good reasons too...