The Core 2 Brand technology of Intel refers to the MCM quad core CPUs and a 64-bit dual core, having an x86-64 instruction set based on the micro architecture of Intel Core. It is derived from the Yonah laptop processor, which is a 32 bit dual core.

It was on the 27^th of July, 2006 that the Core2 brand was unveiled by Intel. As of 2007, the brand comprised of Duo, Extreme and Quad. The first of the branded cores were launched at a yearly gaming event in Edmonton, Canada. With the help of a 65 nm manufacturing process, these were fabricated on wafers 300 mm thick. They were the replacement for the Pentium D and Pentium 4 branded CPUs.

Based on the claims made by Intel, the Conroe has 40 % less power with an equal increase in performance than the Pentium D. Although, most processors of Conroe were done with 4 MB L2 cache, the E6400 and E6300 versions have 50 % of their cache disabled which leaves them with only 2 MB of L2 cache. These E6400 and E6300 Conroe-based CPUs have a B2 stepping.

Core 2 Extreme:

The official launch of Core 2 Extreme was done on the 29^th of July, 2006. The less powerful Core 2 Duo E6×00 models were available for its release with X6800, which are available at such period. Powered by the Conroe XE core, it replaces the Extreme Edition processors of Pentium.

The clock speed of Core 2 Extreme is 2.93 GHz with 1066 MT/s FSB, although initially, it was expected to be released with 1333 MT/s and 3.33 GHz. The family TDP ranges from 75 watts to 80 watts. With the enabling of Speed Step, the average temperature when idle is the same as that of the ambient atmosphere.

At its launch, the price of Intel for the Core 2 Extreme edition reached 999 US Dollars, in quantities of 1000. As in case of Core 2 Duo desktop, it has the availability of 4 MiB of shared L2 cache.