“Core 2” series conquered the market; Intel’s new CPU creates a hot summer.

Intel rolled out their new “Core 2” series CPU on July 22nd. This CPU series has higher performance and cheaper prices than previous models. We will explore the market trend by using “BCN Ranking” and also look at the features of each model.

“Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66Ghz)” received the top sales share of the CPU market with its high performance and cheaper price.

CPU is like the brain of a computer. In the Japanese CPU market, Intel and AMD are the top two makers, especially Intel with 70% of the market share.

Intel launched its “Core 2” series last August as the new model of their CPU “Pentium” series. The point of the “Core 2” series is that they have dual cores on the inside. This July, Intel released seven new products under three types of the new “Core 2” series, which are “Core 2 Duo,” “Core 2 Quad” and “Core 2 Extreme.”

According to the “BCN Ranking” from July 23rd to July 29th, the new “Core 2” series created a sensation in the market. “Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz)” took first place with 19.2% of sales share. The “E6750” is a middle class model that includes 2.66GHz of clock speed and 4MB of shared L2 cache. The price for this model is about ¥25,000. What’s more, the “Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0GHz)” took third place and the “Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz)” was in fifth place.

The “E6750” has the same clock speed as the “E6700”, which was the previous “Core 2” series model, but costs less than half the price of the “E6700”. The front side bus was also upgraded from 1066MHz to 1333 MHz. These factors made the “E6750” a top seller.

The difference of each “Core 2” series

As the above sales ranking shows, almost all CPUs are part of the “Core 2 Duo” series. However, “Core 2 Quad” and “Core 2 Extreme” are “Core 2” series that have higher performance than the “Core 2 Duo” series. These upper classes of CPU are very expensive. For example, the price of the “Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz)” is around ¥71,000 and the “Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.0GHz)” costs about ¥131,500.

There is a central unit called “Core” on the inside of the “Core 2” series. “Duo” has two “cores” on the inside and “Quad” and “Extreme” has four cores. Kenji Ogawa, Manager at TSUKUMO eX1, said, “The only difference between ‘Quad’ and ‘Extreme’ is the clock speed. There are no special differences between their frameworks.”

Currently, there is not many software that requires a high performance CPU such as “Quad” or “Extreme.” Recent buyers of these CPUs are specialists such as graphic designers or CPU enthusiasts that prefer to have the newest products. On the other hand, the market demand for “Duo” will increase as the price becomes more economical for consumers.

Can the new “Core 2” series stimulate the PC parts market?

In order to use the newest CPUs efficiently, we need peripheral parts that have appropriate specifications for them. Last year, when Intel launched its first “Core 2” series, the market demand for motherboards and video cards increased, and this effect continues. For example, the sales of motherboards are higher now than the previous year in August. The number of units sold increased from 101% to 132% and the sales amount also increased from 122% to 156% compared with last year.

Kenji Ogawa forecasts the PC parts market by saying, “A booming economy of PC parts from last year is still alive. The decline of CPU prices will revitalize the market again. We can still expect the replacement demand of PC parts.” The hot summer of CPU and PC parts is still continuing.