Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 & E6400: Tremendous Value Through Overclocking
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 26, 2006 8:17 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance using Quake 4, Battlefield 2 & Half-Life 2 Episode 1
Our gaming performance analysis starts out with Quake 4 running at 1600 x 1200 with High Quality visual settings. We used version 1.2 of Quake 4 and SMP was enabled:
Once we shift over to gaming performance, the differences between all of the tested systems are greatly diminished. Enabling 4xAA would further reduce the difference, to the point where most of the systems would be about equal. This does not change the fact that the Core 2 Duo chips are able to outperform their AMD counterparts in terms of raw performance, so once faster graphics cards become available we should see the processors begin to differentiate themselves more. Of course, by then we might also have games that are more demanding of the GPU.
Looking specifically at Quake 4 performance -- and remember that this is one of the few games that can truly take advantage of multiple processor cores -- the Core 2 processors continue to outperform their AMD counterparts, but only by a small margin. The overall spread between the X6800 and the X2 3800+ is 35%, which is certainly noticeable, but with frame rates that are all averaging over ~120 FPS Quake 4 is clearly going to run well on all of the tested systems. We had hoped to include Prey performance as well, so that we could see how an updated Quake 4/Doom 3 engine game performs, but we ran into benchmarking issues that we are currently investigating.
Next up we've got the recently released Half Life 2: Episode 1, running at default quality settings (auto detected with a pair of X1900 XTs installed) with the exception of AA and aniso being disabled. As with all of our gaming tests in this article we tested at 1600 x 1200:
In Half-Life 2: Episode One, the Performance spread is 41%. At the top end of the spectrum, we're beginning to become GPU limited even without antialiasing enabled. Valve's Source engine clearly likes the Core 2 architecture, as even without overclocking the E6300 and E6400 clearly perform better than their similarly priced AMD counterparts.
Battlefield 2 is a game that has consistently demonstrated it is more CPU limited than GPU limited, especially with high-end graphics solutions. Here the spread between the processors is 58%, and the E6300/E6400 without overclocking are faster than everything from AMD except for the FX-62. At the top end of the spectrum, we finally begin to reach the limitations of our GPUs, with the top four systems all performing within 3% of each other.
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coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Assuming you have the Socket AM2 platform, then yes you can, remember 5000+ only exists for Socket AM2, and not Socket 939.Since that platform is relatively new, only a handful who have would consider upgrading to anything.
Gigahertz19 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I'm definetly going with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4GHz since it is the cheapest one that has 4Mb of L2 cache and overclock it to 3GHz or whatever is stable.Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I'm also missing any mention of single core solutions. Sure, dual core is the future, but in the present, single core is just as fast for games and a lot cheaper.An Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4 ghz costs only 110 dollar/euro.
krisia2006 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
AMD left me wanting for an affordable dual core cpu and Intel answered.I bought the Pentium Ds and will buy the Core 2 Duo.
In the present, I play games fine on my Pentium Ds.
Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Isn't way too much attention given to CF/SLI?
Given the costs, it's only interesting to 'diehard' gamers that spend very much money on their systems.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
The benefits in some games are huge, and I would say just about any gamer would at least *think* about CF/SLI before making a decision as to what to buy. That doesn't mean they have to go that route, but without CF/SLI you will certainly be GPU limited at higher resolutions. This is a well-established fact, as in recent titles you can't run 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 with 4xAA/8xAF and still get CPU-limited results.samuraiBX - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Hey guys, I like the article, but I was wondering, why did you go with medium settings instead of ultra high or high? I'd like to see the performance in that arena more than the medium settings. Any chance we could get those? Thanks!coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
The performance is obvious, even on a Crossfire system with image quality settings tunred up you will get a straight line down the middle between NetBurst, K8, and Core based products due to the GPU being the bottleneck, since the emphasis was CPU performance, they need to kick back on the GPU settings a tad to make sue the CPU is the limiting factor.Real world, a Pentium D 915/945 would be sufficient for gaming.
bob661 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
What impresses me the most about these Conroe's is their OCing ability. Almost as fast as a Conroe EE for less than a 1/4 of its price.mkruer - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
You might want to pick up the new stepping 6 (mass produces ones) A lot of people over at xteamesystesm are complaining that the stepping 6 doesn’t over clock nearly as well as the stepping 5 and that the temperatures are staring to go though the roof.Personally I would love to know if this is true
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...