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
Over a week has passed since our Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo review and although the dust is finally starting to settle, not all questions have been answered. We're still hard at work on investigating issues like 64-bit performance and comparing performance per Watt across more applications, but today we're here with another piece of the puzzle: a look at the Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400.
The E6300 and E6400 are particularly attractive members of the Core 2 family because of their fairly low cost; unfortunately their performance isn't as easy to predict because they are currently the only two Core 2 processors that don't have a 4MB L2 cache. We already illustrated in our earlier review that the larger L2 cache found in the E6600 and above is good for up to 10% of a performance boost depending on the application, but the fact of the matter is that the cheapest 4MB Core 2 Duo is $316 while you can have the E6300 and E6400 for $183 and $224 respectively.
In addition to the question of performance, there's also the issue of overclockability. We've already seen that the high end Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme CPUs are fairly overclockable, thanks in no small part to Intel's 65nm manufacturing process, but what about at the low end? Can you take a $183 Core 2 Duo E6300 and through overclocking achieve performance similar to the more expensive E6600 or even the almighty X6800? It's been a while since we've even wanted to overclock an Intel CPU in order to get better performance. In the past we'd simply recommend buying AMD, but with Core 2 Duo the overclocking prospects are too intriguing to ignore.
New Pricing
AMD hasn't been sitting idle; this week its extremely aggressive price cuts go into effect, making the Athlon 64 X2 a more affordable CPU in many cases compared to Intel's Core 2 processors. AMD also announced its intentions to acquire ATI Technologies, but we'll save that discussion for a forthcoming article.
The new pricing structure can be seen below:
| CPU | Clock Speed | L2 Cache | Price |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 | 2.93GHz | 4MB | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 | 2.66GHz | 4MB | $530 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 | 2.40GHz | 4MB | $316 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ | 2.6GHz | 512KBx2 | $301 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ | 2.4GHz | 512KBx2 | $240 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 | 2.13GHz | 2MB | $224 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ | 2.2GHz | 512KBx2 | $187 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 | 1.86GHz | 2MB | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 945 | 3.40GHz | 2MBx2 | $163 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2.0GHz | 512KBx2 | $152 |
| Intel Pentium D 915 | 2.80GHz | 2MBx2 | $133 |
| Intel Pentium D 820 | 2.80GHz | 1MBx2 | $113 |
| Intel Pentium D 805 | 2.66GHz | 1MBx2 | $93 |
The Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is now cheaper than the Core 2 Duo E6600, which was really necessary considering that the E6600 is faster than the Athlon 64 FX-62 across the board. If the E6600's street price ends up being significantly higher than the table's suggested $316, the 5000+ (assuming its street price is not also inflated by demand) will be a nice alternative.
The E6400 is now more expensive than the X2 4200+, a comparison that we will be able to look at in-depth today to determine a winner at the low $180 - $230 price range.
And finally we have the E6300, which now is a more expensive competitor to our long-time favorite: the Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Today we'll find out for sure if the E6300 will be the low-cost dual core CPU to have.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
137 Comments
View All Comments
getbush - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
There is a for that should be four and you start the oblivion page with will instead of we'll.JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Thanks - I gave the document a final proofing now that I'm a bit more coherent and squashed several more "typos" (speech-recognition-os?) I helped Anand fill in a bunch of the text, but it was late and my eyes weren't cooperating. LOLyacoub - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
What I see here is that the E6400 is easily the way to go for folks who aren't interested in overclocking but want the best bang-for-the-buck.For very little more $$ than the E6300, you get a chip that rides quite a bit higher up on the charts in many tests.
Now the question: What affordable motherboard is recommended for stable, reliable non-overclocked C2D Conroe performance? Perhaps the Intel P965 board?
There's no reason to drop $200-250 for a motherboard when you aren't going to utilize its overclocking functionality. I believe that opens up the user to the more affordable P965 boards, right? They tend to be more around $150 and if it's made by Intel it should be plenty stable, right?
Also most boards now are passively-cooled which is excellent since the dinky fans on older motherboards were always noisy and died quickly. Avoiding those is another benefit as I believe the Intel P965 board is passively cooled as well.
Thoughts?
anandtechrocks - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Check out the Gigabyte DS3. It uses the P965 chipset and costs ~$144. It overclocks just as well as the $250 Asus motherboard in this article and it uses very high quality solid capacitors. Only drawback is that no SLI or Crossfire.yacoub - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I don't know, looks like there's some cause for concern about currently available 965 boards now...http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...amp;thre...
anandtechrocks - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Very good article, I really enjoyed it. I think there is an error on page 4, on the 3rd graph from the bottom. The E6300 and E6400 bars are miss-labled.JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Fixed - thanks.code65536 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
How do the OC'ed chips do with power consumption. Does a 6400 @ 2.88 use more or less power than a 6800, for example?supremelaw - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
... and heat.I assume that the stock Intel HSF hasn't changed:
http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...">http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...
and that a superior HSF with proper backing plate
is still recommended for Conroe CPUs, even though
they run cooler in general.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/">http://www.supremelaw.org/
houe - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
fp