AMD broke early ground on popularizing dual-core systems, but most people experienced their first dual-core systems on Intel hardware. Quad-core systems were even more expensive, and the handful of boards on the open market lacked the features that enthusiasts wanted, like AGP slots. Not only were the motherboards more expensive, the CPUs themselves often commanded significant price premiums. It’s hard to remember now, but back then the cost difference between a single-core and dual-core system was enormous. The Core 2 Duo wasn’t Intel’s first dual-core - that was Smithfield, the Prescott P4 chip that debuted the previous year - but it was the first CPU from Intel to show the promise of the dual-core approach that AMD had already debuted. It gave Intel a serious response to AMD’s Athlon 64 family, which had spent nearly three years making hash of the Pentium 4 - and it set the stage for Intel’s ultimate dominance of the x86 CPU market. The company’s then-new 65nm Conroe core set new records for efficiency and high performance. Ten years ago today, Intel launched the Core 2 Duo.
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