Intel's new weapon — Core 2 Quadro Kentsfield

Tom's Hardware tested Intel's Core 2 Quad, codenamed "Kentsfield," which was originally scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2007.

As Intel's first "quad-core" CPU (moving from dual to quad core seems awfully fast for Intel), just how much better is its performance? Tom's Hardware concluded that the Core 2 Quad can be up to 100% faster than the currently available Core 2 Duo.

The future of full HD encoding (1920x1080) will undoubtedly belong to "quad-core" CPUs. From the test data, the Core 2 Quad is 80% faster than the same-frequency (2.66GHz) Core 2 Duo in H.264 encoding and WMV-HD conversion tests.

Some test result charts: