Best PC Products of 2006

2006 has been a revolutionary year in terms of technology. Along with the introduction of completely new technologies like Blu-ray and PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording, for hard drives) we have seen complete overhauls in the Core 2 Duo and the 8800GTX. Let's have a closer look at them.

Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme Processors



Intel was going crazy increasing their clock speeds from 2GHz to 3Ghz and even beyond, which really never worked. On the other hand AMD with their architecturally superior socket 754 and socket 939 processors was almost owning Intel in the consumer desktop space. And just when we thought the lead had completely reversed in AMD's favor, Intel came back with the Core 2 Duo. Taking cues from their Pentium M (mobile processor) and even Pentium 3's architecture, the Core 2 Duo was born and was called the 'Conroe'. This new processor along with blazing speeds is much cooler than its predecessors ( the infamous Prescott series from their Pentium 4 stable was nicknamed 'Press-Hot' for its soaring temperatures) and consumes lesser power 'per watt', as Intel likes to call it. The Core 2 Duo is once again the performance chipset with AMD reduced to the value segment.

Nvidia 680i Motherboard Chipset



If you are talking about performance chipsets for motherboards, there's nothing that can come close to Nvidia. Not taking you too long back in time, Nvidia's NForce4 based motherboards were a rage and were the top choice of enthusiasts with AMD's socket 939 processors. But then 6 months back Intel came back into the scene with their Core 2 Duo processors and Nvidia's offering then was their 500 series chipsets. The 500 series were better suited to the AMD chips and its overclocking capabilities were average. As the enthusiast community completely shifted base to the Core 2 Duo platform, Nvidia was seriously lagging in the game and guys were going for boards with Intel's own 975x performance chipset. Come November, and Nvidia launched their 600i series, with 680i their flagship chip which was completely built, ground up, from Nvidia's lab in Bangalore.

We can firmly say, it's the best Intel Core 2 enthusiast chip available. Among the things that make it the best are the zillions of overclocking options, dual x16 SLI lanes, dual Gigabit Ethernet, HD audio, and an added lane to run a physics card along with SLI.