Intel Core 2 Duo E4300: Affordable and Highly Overclockable
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 10, 2007 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
General Performance
Overall system performance, measured using SYSMark 2004SE, places the default clocked E4300 at within 4% of the performance of the E6300. Obviously the release of the E6320 will widen this gap but E6300-level performance is nothing to balk at, given the price point of this chip what we're looking at is nothing short of stellar.
Overclocked, the E4300 truly shines - outpacing the X6800 by a marginal 3.3%. The margin of victory is well within the variance for SYSMark but the point to take home is that we're looking at an overclocked $163 chip, delivering performance equal to a CPU priced at six times its cost.
Internet Content Creation performance reflects what we saw in the overall score - the E4300 is within striking distance of the E6300, and of course faster than AMD's Athlon 64 X2 3800+. When overclocked, the E4300 can give you better performance than a X6800, this time coming in 11% faster.
The Office Productivity suite changes things a bit; while the E4300 continues to perform similarly to the E6300, when overclocked it's still slower than the X6800 despite the clock speed advantage. There are many applications and usage models that will end up favoring more cache over a higher clock speed, and that's where the E4300 will lose out to its more expensive alternatives. At the end of the day, it's still a great value, but keep in mind that the smaller cache will limit maximum performance in some areas.
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yiranhu - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
9X multiplier!!! Now there's absolutely no point in buying the 6300/6400!!yyrkoon - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Unless of course, you're going the budget CPU server route, and need virtualization. For example, using Xen, in order to run Windows in a domU (VM), you need VT.yehuda - Thursday, January 11, 2007 - link
Hi,Who else should be concerned with the lack of VT support?
If I run emulators locally (my personal experience includes bochs, qemu and DOSBox), is there anything I would lose going with the E4300?
Thanks
Yoshi911 - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
I think that with a 3ghz Opty144, My next upgrade will be to a Opty165 that I can run at 3ghz...2mb cache and dual core, good for gaming still.. all I'll ever need...SPEND YOUR MONEY ON VIDEO CARD UPGRADES AND RAM!!! if you don't have 2gb's ram and a nice video card... DONT EVEN THINK about upgrading platforms.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
And if you don't have 2GB of RAM, don't even think about spending the money on 2x1GB DDR-400! As for me, I have an Opty 165 that tops out at around 2.6GHz with a Scythe Ninja cooler, so you'll be lucky to get 3.0GHz. Even if you do get 3.0GHz, a Core 2 E4300 overclocked to 3.5GHz+ (remember we're talking stock cooler in this article) would beat it for performance. Now, if you have 2GB of DDR and a decent CPU and you are mostly worried about games, then the GPU is the bigger issue. If you don't have any of those things and need to upgrade, you'll be best getting Core 2 with DDR2 and a fast GPU, rather than X2/Opteron and DDR/DDR2 and a fast GPU.Yoshi911 - Thursday, January 11, 2007 - link
Yeah but we're talking about cost effective performance for games... 90fps vs 190fps is going to look very little difference.. the next upgrade any gamer should be thinking about should be a DX10 compatable system.Doh! - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Why hasn't yet Intel released this cpu for the consumer in the US? This cpu has been widely available since Jan. 5 in Korea. Isn't the US usuually the first place for a new cpu launch?deathwalker - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Very nice reiview and the introduction of a true bargin in CPU's. Alas though..once again us SFF builders(I have a microfly case) are out in the cold since nearly all the Matx C2D motherboards are "crap" overclockers. This is not the place for it..but I will none the less rant on the Mobo builders for not making an honest effort to give us a decent C2D product. By decent, I mean something that will run well at setting other than stock out the box defaults. Nice job AT..this article give hope to builders on a budget.tayhimself - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
-sigh- i complained of this after ATs informative review on uATX cases asking if anyone knew any uATX 965 boards that would OC decently (350 FSB even). Too bad I got no respnoses then either.Goty - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
I'm not sure the price difference here is quite enough to pull anyone away from the E6300 (or the E6320 when it hits the market). It's only $50 cheaper on average, but you lose the faster FSB of the E6300 and I've seen a lot of E6300s overclock a lot better than this chip.