Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 - Core 2 Duo Conroe Dual-Core 2.33 GHz LGA 775 65W Processor - BX80557E6550

Pros: Extremely fast, this thing will pretty much run everything you throw at it. I over clock mine to 3.28 Ghz using a zerotherm cooler and it's rock stable, run orthos for a whole day and no error at all

Cons: the fan heat sink thing is a pain to install (lucky the zerotherm I have is a lot easier to install)the x7 multiplier really limited your ability to OC without better mobo.

Overall Review: I have a D3SL gigabyte mobo, and crucial 6400 ram runing at 940 mhz and 4-4-4-12 timing. The temp. never get above 55 under full load @ 3.38 GHZ

Pros: Good Price compared to other comparable dual cores with less or more cache, no headaches and the stock fan installs and works fine contrary to what others complain about... running at 27c idle in windows and 32 from bios.

Cons: Processing power is only sufficient without overclock. 3-4 multitasking becomes somewhat iffy under load and bottlenecks here and there in vista with all visual settings turned up.

Overall Review: I have it paired with a 8800gts and I am not quite sure if the hiccups are from the card or the chip, but with my setup not everything is super fluid as some may lead you to believe. I think it is the chip because according to windows I get 5.9s on everything except processing speed, which I only get 5.3 on. Possibly time to tinker with it a bit, which I did not think will be necessary... I should have gone with a quad or maybe something with a little more speed