The CPU industry is buzzing with reviews and online discussions about the new Intel Core 2 Duo chips unvieled earlier this week, and understandably so. With the Conroe (codename for the Core 2 Duo), Intel is finally doing dual core for the desktop right. Their earlier entry into the desktop dual core field was a total failure, which is what you’d expect when you take two fire hazards and cram them onto the same chip.

This time, however, the Israel-based design team (the same team responsible for the highly successful Intel mobile chips) came to the rescue with a native dual core archeticture for the Core 2 Duo, and the results are amazing. Don’t get me wrong– we were expecting these new babies to do well. But we didn’t expect (or at least I didn’t expect) them to completely eclipse the highest end AMD offering to date. All the tech review sites that I frequent– The Tech Report, HardOCP, Tom’s Hardware, AnandTech, and then some– are all in agreement.

Has the reign of AMD finally come to an end? I think this picture speaks for itself.

It’s amazing, really, when you consider that this could be a turning point in the AMD - Intel war which for the longest time has been very much one sided. Take this quote from The Tech Report, for example:

Pentium 4 and Pentium D CPUs have run at relatively high clock speeds but delivered relatively low performance compared to their competition from AMD. They’ve also drawn a tremendous amount of power, which they’ve generously expended as heat. In other words, they’ve been hotter than Jessica Simpson and slower than, well, Jessica Simpson.

Now take a look at the headlines from a couple reviews of the new Intel chips:

Tom’s Hardware: Game Over? Core 2 Duo Knocks Out Athlon 64
AnandTech: Intel’s Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
ExtremeTech: The Core 2: Intel Goes for the Jugular

I for one will be looking forward to replacing my current AMD setup with one of these Intel Core 2 Duo chips. The only question is, when? Now if only Microsoft wouldn’t keep delaying Vista…