In an effort to thwart chip giant AMD's nefarious plans to create a dual-core 64-bit chip, scrappy underdog Intel is rolling out their new chipsets early. Dual core processors, which use two CPUs on one hunk of silicon, are a way to get around the massive amounts of heat modern chips are throw out and up the overall processing power without hogging valuable motherboard real estate.

Running at 3.2GHz, the new Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 840 runs on Intel's 955X Express chipset. Intel will then release the Pentium D in May, just in time for the dual-core Opteron launch. It'll be interesting to see where dual-core is headed as AMD and Intel fight it out in the 64-bit space and the dual-core space in the next few months. [via gizmodo]