Intel Core Duo? Whassup? Faster?

So what's the big deal with these latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, anyway? Well, the Merom chips introduced today take the higher power and efficiency of the desktop Core 2 Duo processors introduced a few weeks back and apply that to laptops. Intel claimed the Merom Core 2 Duo processors would show a 20% performance boost over their predecessors, the Core Duo processors used in notebooks.

But we're not going to believe Intel, are we? Trusty testers at Laptop Magazine checked out Intel's claims and it turns out the chip giant's boasts were accurate, even conservative in some cases. The testers used two identical notebooks, where the only difference was one of them had the fastest Core 2 Duo processor and the other had the fastest Core Duo processor. Sure enough, the new Core 2 Duo processor was 22% faster than the old Core Duo, while battery life was still pretty much the same. The newer processor did even better in multitasking operations.