(Apologies to Intel for altering their slogan for their Dual Core Processors.)

I’ve noticed that Desktop PCs with Quad Core Processors are beginning to appear in the weekly Ads of local technology retailers. Desktops with Quad Core processors from both Intel and AMD are being advertised. The AMD Quad Core chip is called the Phenom, admittedly quite a cool name for a processor, and the Intel name is plain old Core 2 Quad. From comparisons by various technology companies, it appears that the AMD Phenom is still playing catch-up with the Intel Core 2 Quad.

One quad core desktop I looked at was the HP Pavilion Elite m9060n Desktop. This Media center PC has a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, 3GB RAM and a total of 640GB hard disk space, consisting of two 320GB 7200rpm hard drives. It has a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT video card with 512 MB of Video Memory. In the media department there is an integrated FM tuner and TV Tuner with remote, as well as a Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive. This is definitely a system to connect to a large widescreen LCD monitor or HDTV so you can enjoy high definition movies in either format.

Even with the dedicated graphics card and Quad Core Processor, this is not a gaming machine. Although it is intended as a media center PC, it will more likely be used as a powerful Desktop PC.

Posted on February 15th, 2008 by mervyn