The chaps over at Hot Hardware have put the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which belongs to the (45nm) Wolfdale line, through its paces, and they sure were impressed. From their extensive testing, the processor did not seem to make any massive changes on an architectural level, however, small adjustments had a great overall effect. The 6MB of L2 cache brought an impressive speed boost, while the power consumption and heat production levels both fell. Indeed, the Core 2 Duo E8500 was comparable in performance to lower clocked quad-core chips, proving the viability of the Wolfdale architecture. The chip is likely to retail at the +$300 mark and that seems to be the only drawback—it is ...