Core 2 Duo notebook processor (CPU)

The Intel Core 2 Duo (also known as Core2 Duo) notebook processor is a 64 bit dual core processor. This means two processor cores work inside a Core 2 Duo in parallel.

The Core 2 Duo, which was introduced on July 27 2006, is the direct successor of the Core Duo. Each core is based on the Pentium M micro architecture. Compared with the old Netburst architecture of the Pentium 4, the cores in the Core 2 Duo have shorter pipelines. As a result, the maximum clock rate is lower but the performance per clock is significantly higher. Thus a Pentium 4M with the same clock rate is up to 40% slower.

Both, the notebook Core 2 Duo and the desktop Core 2 Duo are based on the same processor. However, the notebook version runs with a lower voltage (0.95 to 1.188 volt) and a lower front side bus (1066 vs. 667 MHz). As a result (and because of slower laptop hard discs) the performance of notebooks is about 20% lower than their desktop counterparts with the same clock rate.