Intel has shipped its Dual Core processors

Still haven't found them for sale though... I hope this means that Apple will have some dual core offerings soon.

Yep - This was the running topic of the day for the past year at Intel. This means one of 2 things has happened - either they finished up the work on providing cheap(er) liquid cooling to the cpu which is using traditional desktop cores ----- or they are using mobile cores -- with speed step technology to allow each core to drop its speed based on load - plus more power effecient in general ..... otherwise this baby would burst into flames or sound like a hoover vacume.

Keep in mind that a little over a year ago Intel had to torpedo ints "next gen" desktop cpu - Tejas - because the major OEMs balked at the power and thermal requirements - this was a huge deal because tejas was well over 1/2 way complete in development .... hundreds of millions $$$ down the crapper.

I'm betting on the mobile cores -- this would be a bitter pill to swallow because they would be selling mobile cores for desktop prices which would force them to sell mobile cores at a cheaper price too.

Sorry for my pretty silly question, but what is a Dual Core processor? And what is the difference from the processors that coe with the Macs now?

From http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=261

A dual core processor is between a single core processor and a dual processor system for architecture. A dual core processor has two cores but will share some of the other hardware like the memory controller and bus. A dual processor system has completely separate hardware and shares nothing with the other processor.

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I want a Dual Core G4 Powerbook, I feel it is more likely to happen than a G5 PB.

mynameis said:

I want a Dual Core G4 Powerbook, I feel it is more likely to happen than a G5 PB.

Click to expand...

Maybe and maybe not. There are dual core G4s that would work in a PB right now. In order to get a G5 in a PowerBook there are still some significant hurdles to overcome. Unless IBM manages to cut the thermal output of the G5 down considerably it would not be practical for a laptop even if they do come up with a way to keep the processer itself cool. Think how hot current PBs are getting.

EDIT: Oops misread your post. I thought you said G5 PB was more likely than a dual core G4. Personally I would rather have the dual core G4.

The first systems with this processor in it are shipping from Dell on Monday, too bad they cost $3000.