Intel Core 2 Duo E4300: Affordable and Highly Overclockable
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 10, 2007 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance
Quake 4 performance is reasonably close to the E6300, but when overclocked it can't quite outpace the X6800. The X6800 manages to hold onto a 12% performance advantage even with the E4300 holding onto a clock speed advantage. At stock speeds the E4300 offers similar performance to the Athlon 64 X2 3800+.
Oblivion has always been friendlier to Intel's Core 2 architecture, and thus the E4300 has no problems outpacing the X2 3800+. Compared to the similarly priced Pentium D 945, the E4300 is significantly faster, as the Pentium D's NetBurst architecture has rarely been favored in games. Overclocked, the E4300 gets close to the X6800 but it is no faster.
Half-Life 2: Episode One echoes what we've seen from our other gaming tests - at stock speeds the E4300 is faster than the X2 3800+ and slightly slower than the E6300. When overclocked to 3.38GHz, the E4300 ends up getting close to the performance of the X6800 but it cannot surpass it due to the smaller L2 cache.
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Sunrise089 - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
is this a joke??? Overclocking is done in the BIOS.duploxxx - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
I guess you check the web prices before you post such a comment? to my opinion start price is as high as a 4200 and performance wise more or less the same depending on apps (except for real multithread offcourse where it is known that the c2d performance is less dominating towards the k8)."The E4300 gets even better in Q2 when its price will drop from $163 to $133, making it even more of a bargain.
Today's review will focus on the overall performance of the E4300 at stock speeds as well as when overclocked. At stock speeds the E4300 is priced as a cheaper alternative to the Core 2 Duo E6300 and AMD's Athlon 64 X2 3800+, thus the comparison between those two chips is obvious"
newegg price 3800: 135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
newegg price 4200: 169
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
newegg price e6300: 190
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
tappertrainman - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Can anyone let me know if I would see a big difference upgrading from an A64 (either 1.8GHz or 2.0GHz, I forget) with 1GB of RAM to a Core2 Duo with 2G of RAM?I mostly use the computer for WoW, but I do run it at the very highest resolution, widescreen, on a 22in monitor. I also have Ventrilo running at the same time. Otherwise the computer is mostly used for music, internet, etc.
Am I only going to see a difference if I'm multi-tasking (i.e. WoW, and internet open) or will it improve the single-tasking significantly?
Thanks for any help or advice.
harpoon84 - Friday, January 12, 2007 - link
A C2D @ 3GHz+ will be MUCH faster than an A64 @ 1.8 - 2GHz at everything, single or multithreaded software, as well as multitasking. It will also help your WoW raid framerates significantly.oneils - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
For games, your best component to upgrade is video card. Especially if you turn up the eye candy at high resolutions. This depends though on what platform you are currently using. If you have pci-e for video, then you might want to upgrade the vid card first.A CPU upgrade for wow might not give a noticeable boos...unless you run many applications in the background (ventrillo doesn't take too many resources, I don't think...so I wouldn't be worried about that).
tappertrainman - Friday, January 12, 2007 - link
I already have a 7900GT, are any of the new ones going to be a big step up?clairvoyant129 - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
This is a great review, I can build an awesome budget PC for my folks back at home with this and a DS3 for less $$$. Makes AMD's current offerings look like a complete joke.hubajube - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Which corsair ram did you guys use?OcHungry - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Mr. Anand, This review is as objective as can be and I appreciate your fairness to both sides of the coin (Intel vs. AMD). I hope your staff take example and in the future and conduct their reviews in the same manner as you have.besiar awlee.
ssiu - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Is it 100% stable (per your usual rigorous standards) at 3.375Ghz/1.468V overclocked setting with the stock Intel cooler?Is the Intel stock cooler the same for the whole Core 2 Duo line (from E4300/E6300 up to E6700/X6800)?