Intel Core 2 Duo Family review
Posted by Julio Franco on 02 August 2006 - 09:16 · 15 comments & 14901 views
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Full name: Julio Franco
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Full name: Julio Franco
Forum name: JulioFranco
Contact: via forum PM
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(2 replies)
#1 Posted by Jugalator on 02 Aug 2006 - 09:30
- A useful quote from what I found most interesting in the article:Quote -How much effect clock frequencies drop have on the more affordable models, and the performance impact that comes from halving the L2 Cache from 4MB to 2MB.Quote -The L2 cache did not seem to make much of a difference in our tests, which certainly surprised me. Rather the frequency appears to be the driving factor for now, as games such as UT2004 scored roughly 20fps more each time the frequency was boosted by roughly ~270MHz.
I think I'll still get a 4 MB variant, more specifically an E6600 just to be a bit safer and in case future/untested software and/or drivers will show a greater difference on cache size. I still thought these weren't overpriced for their performance, and the frequency boost seem to be quite helpful too. -
#1.1 Posted by Callisto~ on 02 Aug 2006 - 10:24
- Yeah, I was planning to get the 4MB cache version, too. But what you quote is certainly interesting...
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#2 Posted by dhan on 02 Aug 2006 - 11:06
- Why I am getting asian characters instead of prices in the RSS feed ?
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(1 reply)
#3 Posted by redmanmark86 on 02 Aug 2006 - 11:12
- well in the article it states the slowest of the E series and all of the E Series show great over clocking ability and the slowest it worth a buy and then over clocking it but how is that possible since there all locked apart from the Extremeaddition, seems like a mix up of facts there. i'll prob get the Extreme one unless the other become unlocked, but then i wont be buying one til the next gen graphic cards come out, the direct X ten ones.
anyway there all exactly the same apart from the L2 Cache, so whatever the E6600 can do, the lower ones can to. -
#3.1 Posted by RangerLG on 02 Aug 2006 - 12:33
- Not necessarily. If you look at the Anandtech article, you will see that they were able to clock the 6600 to over 4GHz, even with a locked multiplier. The Extreme Edition still could not top 4GHz. I personally think the 6600 is the best potential of this group.
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(1 reply)
#4 Posted by wase4711 on 02 Aug 2006 - 11:32
- they didnt even mention the Extereme E6800...
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#4.1 Posted by JulioFranco on 02 Aug 2006 - 11:49
- First page:
"Also out of our round-up but still worth a mention is the Core 2 Extreme processor that runs at 2.93 GHz, as with previous CPUs in the Extreme line, this model comes with an unlocked multiplier, however its $999 price tag puts it on a different level than the processors we are testing today."
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(3 replies)
#5 Posted by Cyber Dog on 02 Aug 2006 - 13:29
- There was a big review of the Core2 Extreme in the latest maximum PC and it absolutely mopped the floor with everything AMD has right now. Performance boosts were up to 70% over the old fastest, and it didn't even get hot. I was certainly impressed.
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#5.1 Posted by dagamer34 on 02 Aug 2006 - 13:58
- Why wouldn't they mop the floor? AMD's design is 3 years old.
The thing I'm wondering is that if the E6400 is so good and beats even more costly Pentium Ds, then they could have made like a $130 chip running at like 1.4Ghz or something.
Or maybe they DO want AMD to stick around... -
#5.2 Posted by MrCobra on 02 Aug 2006 - 14:05
- Either way, it promotes competition which is good for us. I use only AMD but that E6600 has me excited. I want one.
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#5.3 Posted by Cyber Dog on 02 Aug 2006 - 15:02
- [quote=dagamer34 said,#5.1]Why wouldn't they mop the floor? AMD's design is 3 years old.[quote]
Well, when the Pentium 4 came out it's initial performance was certainly lackluster. You never know what you're going to get with new designs.
But a chip that's dual core, uses less power, creates huge speed increases, and produces less heat...that's substancial in so many ways. Especially coming from a company many people were losing faith in.
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(1 reply)
#6 Posted by leovanham on 02 Aug 2006 - 14:54
- is this the Conroe version?? it still confuses me.
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#6.1 Posted by Jugalator on 02 Aug 2006 - 15:11
- Yep, the processors once codenamed "Conroe" are the first series of processors in the Intel Core 2 line to be released. They're the processors labeled "E6x00" and for stationary computers. "Merom" is the Intel Core 2 mobile processors. Speaking of code names, "Kentsfield" is the upcoming quad-core version of the "Conroe" (Wikipedia says OEM availability in late 2006??), and "Allendale" is upcoming budget versions planned for 2007.
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#7 Posted by japanesetea on 02 Aug 2006 - 15:57
- sweet I'm also waiting on the graphics card thing too. And waiting for quad core. since I dont want to buy a dualie only to have it obsolete the next day by quads. he he
But it's not for nothing that such tremendous hype surrounded Intel's new CPUs release. As our test results will show later on, even the slowest Intel Core 2 Duo processor is significantly faster than more expensive Pentium D processors. Take the Pentium D 950 for example, this is a $250 processor whereas the newer Core 2 Duo E6300 will initially cost just $180. The question is however, which of the four Intel Core 2 Duo processors deliver the best performance vs. price ratio?
In this article we will be exploring the differences between the four Core 2 Duo processors. How much effect clock frequencies drop have on the more affordable models, and the performance impact that comes from halving the L2 Cache from 4MB to 2MB.