The $500 Gaming Machine, 2007 Edition

Intel Processor: Pentium Dual Core E2160

The Pentium Dual Core is basically a 65-nm Core 2 Duo processor, but it has a 200 MHz system clock speed (FSB800) and only 1 MB L2 cache. All Core 2 Duo processors currently use at least 2 MB L2 cache or 4 MB cache. Future CPUs based on the 45-nm Penryn design will even have 3 MB and 6 MB cache. Model E2160 runs at 1.8 GHz.

All Intel current processors with G and L steppings have improved energy efficiency in idle mode, making them almost comparable to AMD's Athlon X2 lineup. However, the Intel CPUs still require slightly more power, which can be tolerated considering their better performance and typically larger L2 cache size (not in this particular case, though). Different from AMD's processor, the L2 cache is shared between the two processing cores. It supports the Execute Disable bit, 64-bit extensions for the latest operating systems and Enhanced SpeedStep to reduce clock speed in idle mode. However, the Pentium Dual Core does not support virtualization technology.