Originally Posted by
Macadamia
What would Lynnfield bring to the desktop then?
On the other hand, now that Deneb has made the IPC gap closer to Yorkfield, the E8XXX is going to have a hard time. AMD's new X3s are not like their old (more or less) pathetic attempts. This time it's much stronger (in terms of IPC and clock), priced probably rightly, and even has an enthusiast oriented version to butt heads with the E8600, which it will be cheaper against.
The E7XXX is a tough one to handle. It has only 3MB of cache (which does take away some % of performance), but AMD's K10.5 dualcore has no L3, just 2*1MB of L2 (at least this is fast).
E7400's the top model now. 2.8Ghz. AMD probably can counter with a 3Ghz dual core SKU. If Intel goes to E7500, AMD just needs to shift to 3.2. Nowadays on 45nm, they no longer have any big difficulties to not go aggressive on dual core stock clocks, which will be what most OEMs will use.
E5XXX is an easy sweep. Again, dual core K10.5 speedbinned.