Anandtech has a preview of the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 posted today that pits the Core 2 Extreme X6800 against an Athlon 64 FX-62. The chip was tested in a hotel room in Taiwan, from where a few trips to hardware manufacturers' offices yielded a compatible motherboard based on Intel's latest P965 Express chipset. Outside the confines of Intel's labs, the Core 2 Extreme was compared to a similar machine powered by one of AMD's latest 2.8 GHz Athlon 64 FX-62 processors for Socket AM2. While synthetic benchmarks are covered in the article, it is the gaming performance numbers we all want to see.

While the Pentium D has never been as attractive as AMD's Athlon 64 X2, at these prices some of them may be difficult to resist. The $93 Pentium D 805 will be particularly hard to ignore, when was the last time you could build a solid two processor workstation for a few hundred dollars?

The Pentium D 805 aside, the rest of the Pentium D line becomes extremely attractive after these price cuts take place, especially when you consider that AMD's cheapest dual core offering is still hovering around the $300 mark.

Intel's price cuts are very aggressive, to the point that they are the talk of the town in Taiwan. Every single motherboard manufacturer we met with asked us about Intel's price cuts and, more importantly, how AMD would respond. We've been told that AMD will respond with a series of price cuts of its own, the questions when and how much remain unanswered. Next week, in Taipei, AMD will be speaking with many motherboard manufacturers about its response to Intel's threat.

Despite the lower pricing on the Pentium Ds, it's not like Conroe ends up being all that expensive. The entry level E6300 and E6400 chips are both priced at $183 and $224, respectively, which is far from high. As attractive as the Pentium D's pricing may be, Conroe's performance and lower power consumption may still end up driving more demand than there is supply.