Intel is up for a tough game. It is competing with itself and its older products. As AMD has lost the performance battle already in 2006, in 2007 Intel competes with its previous Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad products and recently announced FSB 1333 CPUs are not making its life easier.

Obviously in some scenarios FSB 1333 Core 2 Duo and the single Core 2 Quad will beat the previous FSB 1066 and Intel will hurt its FSB 1066 sales, but it will pick up with FSB 1333 product sales.

End users can not be happier as in Europe a 3GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 with FSB 1333 costs between €250 and €270 and this will be enough for most users. Only a few extreme users will go for the €999 priced Q6850 quad core with the same FSB, but this will cost you almost four times more.

Intel is getting into a tough time convincing end users that quad core really matters, we can say it does, but not for everyday tasks, but it can speed up your rendering and movie decoding tremendously, but not your Firefox + Excel combination.

One thing is certain, Intel is ready for Barcelona, Agena and Agena Phenomenal FX.