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Well it looks like the Intel Core Duo 2 is ahead in cost/performance and wattage per performance. It will be interesting once the server intel chips come out later this summer.

Countless sites I have been to indicate this is completely accurate, although AMD will reprice their chips giving comparable value would be quite a hit.
Here is a link with more info:

http://http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/07/14/intel_core_2_duo_processors/1.html

Post your thoughts and opinions here.

EDIT: Here is a link which includes AMD pricing. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_609,00.html?redir=CPPR01

The Intel Core Duo processor is amazing. I had the chance to try it on my father's 2.37 (I think...whatever the highest Core Duo processor is for the MacBook Pro) Ghz Intel processor, and I have to say that it is a big improvement, specifically when doing multi-tasking - I was burning a DVD, applying a filter on a homebrew movie in iMovie, and reading my e-mail with no appearent change in the Ferrari-fast speeds.

I think, however, in the long rong that RAM is most likely the easiest way to speed your computer up. My iBook G4 is fast, but not nearly as fast as either of the new MacBook or MacBook Pros - it is only a 2 and some Ghz G4 processor, very archaic in relation to the newer processors. However, when I put a 1Gb chip of RAM in my iBook, bumping up the RAM to 1.5 Gb, I find that it actually goes FASTER than my father's MacBook Pro (when running Rosetta applications), and as fast in other areas.

-Alex

Intel Core duos are good but this topic is about the slightly newer and vastly more powerful intel core duo 2 processors.

Ram is indeed a good enhancement of speed, I assume the Macbook pro your father has had onlyy 512 Ram in it?

It comes with 2 gb.

What sort of tasks did you find the iBook had comparable performance outside of Rosseta?

Based on projected Price drops I can make further analysis.

The Conroe X6800 is the most powerful chip on the market. It has a price of 999 USD.

The Conroe E6600 and E6700 also seem to be beyond all AMD desktop chips in performance and sell for 316 and 530 USD respectively.

The top of the line AMD Chips is the AthlonFX62 which will allegedly drop to the price of 799 USD from the current 999 USD. An E6600 or E6700 have better bang for a buck in that case based on my readings.

The E6400 has performance at or beyond a X2 5000+ and sells for 224 USD as opposed to the X2 5000+ current price of 649 USD and a dropped price of 282 USD. It seems like the new Intel chips are favored in their low end as well.

AMD is also projected to drop prices on chipsets that are not comparable to these new processors, the full list can be seen here http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/2094 ... g_1023.png

This is by no means final information on performance and price for either end, it is just some light research of my own based on price numbers I have found as well as performance comparisons.

Running a large amount of programs at once. I ran iTunes which was streaming a radio music channel, iDVD which was processing a video I did with my camcorder, Mail, Safari with several tabs open (which is in itself a memory hog), Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, Word, Adium X, FreeMind, and Preview open with a PDF. I had 512 mb free on my RAM and there was no slowness at all.

Yes, RAM would help with multitasking such as that but if you tried anything processor intensive and compared it I think you would find your Fathers computer much more powerful. For example try encoding a video file to h.264 on each machine.

I might up my Macbooks RAM to 1GB or 2GB at some point in the future depending on performance.

Well. Most likely. I'm just trying to give the point across that RAM does make a large difference. If you get an intensive processor with only 512 mb of RAM, you're not reaching your optimum speed.