After years of wandering in the wilderness, Intel has recaptured the desktop CPU performance title in dramatic fashion. Both the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 easily outperform the Athlon 64 FX-62 across a range of applications—and the E6600 is right in the hunt, as well. Not only that, but the Core 2 processors showed no real weaknesses in our performance tests. (I would say that Core looks like a more balanced architecture than Netburst, but at this stage of the game, Netburst just seems slow almost across the board.) No matter what you're hoping to do with your PC, a Core 2 processor should be a very solid choice.

Intel is set to launch the Core 2 CPUs July 27, though availability might be limited for quite some time. In case you want more benchmarking articles, you can find them at bit-tech.net, Bytesector, Phoronix, Gamepyre, Sharky Extreme, Hexus, GDHardware, SimHQ, FiringSquad and GotFrag.