The fastest of dual core, Core 2 Duo E8600 with its 3.33GHz clock and 6MB cache will start selling in Q3 at a $266 price mark. That is currently the wholesale price of the E8500, a Core 2 that works at 3.16GHz and naturally with the launch of E8600, the 3.16GHz part will drop to a more acceptable $187.

A 3.33GHz is the fastest clock out of the box for the Core 2 generation and it won’t get much higher than that. Naturally, you can overclock these CPUs in most cases even over the magical 4GHz mark, but Intel doesn’t really dare to ship the CPUs at much faster speeds than 3.16 and later 3.33GHz out of the box.

The second part of the story is that Intel doesn’t have to do it, as Phenom with its current clock speeds in really not great competition.