How is this "sad"? The C2D takes a FEW ingredients out of previous designs (both P3 and P4, actually), adds many new technologies, and performs like a champ. That should be the only thing that matters.
And to be honest, calling the C2D a "souped up Pentium Pro/P6" is stretching it. I guess you could get away with calling the original Core Duos and Pentium Ms 'cache-bumped P3s on a quad-pumped bus', but the Core 2 Duo is quite a bit different, from its 64-bit capable design to its 128-bit SSE engine.
I like to consider the Core 2 architecture 1/5 Pentium III (short instruction pipeline), 1/5 Pentium 4 (QDR front side bus), and 3/5 brand new technology (128-bit SSE, a redesigned and much more powerful FPU, different internal data caching scheme, 64-bit capability, native dual core, etc).
"Does anyone else miss the days when a new CPU, was a "new" CPU? ie, 286 to 386, than 386 to 486,..."
Actually, I'd say that the 386 and 486 are more closely related/similar to each other than the Core 2 Duo and Pentium III/P6 are. The 486 was really just a fast 386 with a small internal cache and a 387-like FPU tacked on.
And the Pentium was really just a 'hyper-threaded' 486, using two 486-style internal data pipelines to execute twice the amount of instructions/second while running 'Pentium aware' programs. This is much like how the P4 HT handles both integer and FP threads at the same time while running 'HT-aware' programs.
The Pentium Pro was the first radically different chip than the 386/486/Pentium. Just like Core 2 is different from both Netburst and P6!
"Opteron = Athlon64 = AthlonXP = Athlon. Over 10 freaking years old!"
Again, the Opteron and Athlon 64 may have a few similaries to the K7, such as a short data pipeline and good branch prediction, as well as a kinda similar L1 cache design, but they are still much more than a souped-up K7. The larger, wider cache, on-chip memory contoller, and 64-bit capability illustrate how vastly different they are from the K7-based Athlons.
AMD Opteron 185 @ 3.0GHz
4.0GB of OCZ DDR400 RAM
8800GTS 640MB at 625/2000 core/mem, 1500 shader
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
X-Fi, Vista 64-bit, yada yada
Completely owns the Super P3
