Roadmaps reveal the refreshed Conroe with a 1333 MHz front-side-bus arriving in Q3'07, around the same time of Intel's Q3'07 price cuts. The new Core 2 Duo E6x50-series pricing will undercut pricing of current Core 2 Duo E6x00-series processors. As usual, all pricing is in 1,000 unit quantities.

With the introduction of Core 2 Duo E6x50-series processors, the entire Intel Core 2 Duo desktop lineup will fall below the $300 price point. The top of the line Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 is priced at $266 per processor and is clocked at 3.0 GHz - higher than last year's flagship Core 2 Extreme X6800 at a fraction of the X6800's $999 launch price. Slotted below the Core 2 Duo E6850 is the 2.66 GHz E6750 at $183. At the bottom end of the Core 2 Duo E6x50 family are the E6550 and E6540 processors clocked at 2.33 GHz, which cost $163 per processor. Intel's Core 2 Duo E6540 differs from the rest of the 1333 MHz front-side bus Core 2 Duo lineup because it does not have support for Intel's Trusted Execution Technology, also known as TXT.

Intel will also launch two more Core 2 Duo E4000-series processors. The Core 2 Duo E4400 will arrive next month clocked at 2.0 GHz for $133 per processor. In Q3'07, the Core 2 Duo E4400 will drop down to $113 with the introduction of the E4500. The Core 2 Duo E4500 clocks in at 2.2 GHz and takes over the $133 per processor price point. Intel will slowly phase out the Core 2 Duo E4300 processor in Q3'07. Intel will introduce the first new Pentium desktop product since it switched over to the Core naming scheme in June. Two Pentium dual-core Conroe-based processors with 1MB of shared L2 cache models will launch, the 1.80 GHz E2160 ($84) and the 1.6 GHz E2140 ($74).

It looks likeI may be upgrading to Quad-core sooner than expected. :-)