A few years ago, owning a dual core processor was something to be particularly proud of. "Bring on the dual cores", we used to say, and joke around referring to the amount of power we could pack under the hood with AMD Socket 939 based Athlon X2 processors in Shuttle XPCs. We then lit up with a faint sense of superiority at the mentioning of then-nonexistent quad core CPUs for mainstream computing. But times have changed. With practically every computer on the market today equipped with ridiculously high performing dual core CPUs at bargain basement prices, Intel came around and continued the cycle of introducing a new generation of even higher performing processors -- first the flagship Core i7 CPUs code named "Bloomfield" on LGA1366, then came the more mainstream-oriented Core i7 and i5 "Lynnfield" processors on the LGA1156 socket. And here's the thing: For around $200 USD retail at press time, the Intel Core i5-750 promises to deliver excellent performance at mainstream pricing. That being a quad core, too. With clock speed specified at 2.66GHz, 4x256KB L2 and 8MB L3 cache, a controller for dual channel DDR3 memory, and an excellent reputation for incredible overclocking potential, how well does this product based on Intel's 45nm Nehalem architecture fare against the once flagship Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 of the last generation? Read on to find out!