Intel Core 2 Duo E8500

The new dual-core variants of Intel's 45nm Penryn CPU family look like a no-brainer. For the most part, that's how it turns out. The top E8500 model is clocked at an impressive 3.l6GHz, which translates into single and dual-threaded performance to match any processor on the planet. It's also impressively efficient compared to the outgoing 65nm generation of Core 2 Duo CPUs from Intel. Despite running a few hundred MHz faster than the old 2.93GHz X6850 dual-core chip, the E8500 consumes 30 watts less under full load.

It's also significantly quicker in every benchmark than the X6850. Part of that is no doubt thanks to the faster frequency, but the addition of 2MB of cache memory, now a borderline-silly total of 6MB, doesn't hurt. The same goes for the faster 1,333MHz bus. It's all gravy.