Intel has dominated the playing field of CPU technology for the last two decades, and even though rival company AMD for awhile stole some of their fire with their FX series CPUs, Intel is once again leading the pack, and without competition. Where is AMD? Obviously lost in limbo once again as they try and figure out which direction to go in, and try and solve the issues involving their other underdog company, ATI. I am still a bit baffled why a company that had barely started to make headway in the industry bought another company traveling down that same very road. When you are treading water yourself, the last thing you should want is something else to weigh you down. A drowning man doesn't scream out, Hey somebody toss me a rock. Who knows, maybe they will pull a rabbit out of there hat, it has happened before, but for now, both ATI and AMD are trailing behind their counterparts in their common industry. NVIDIA rules the VGA world and Intel owns the CPU market.
Intel's new QX6850 breaths a healthy bit of speed to the LGA775 platform, and allows the latest DDR3 memory to be taken advantage of on motherboards that support this new feature. Enthusiasts, gamers and the; I want the best crowd all will take notice of these new things and start daydreaming of going out and upgrading their systems. How well the general public will embrace this and buy into Intel's plan remains to be seen, but the high-end systems will all have to make the change to take advantage of these new features. AMD has yet to make an announcement that they have a hidden weapon ready to tackle Intel and are most likely trying to play the catch up game in a big way, enthusiasts that once flocked to the AMD banner are scratching their collective heads pondering just what their going to do in the wake of the new Intel dominance. If you want DDR3 and you want a FSB of 1333MHz, the Intel platform is currently the only game in town that supports these new features. The CPU we review today is Intel's new flagship CPU and offers performance levels yet to be seen in the desktop arena.
