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
Final Words
If it weren't for AMD, we wouldn't have Core 2, and if it weren't for Core 2 then we wouldn't have affordable Athlon 64 X2s. Right now is one of the best times to purchase a new processor that we've seen in a long time -- assuming current prices hold and that availability of Core 2 Duo chips is reasonable in the next week or so. If you've been running a single core processor and are finally looking to make the jump to dual core computing, there's little reason not to at this point.
The processor landscape has been changed once more thanks to AMD's extremely aggressive price cuts. The Core 2 Duo E6300 is a better performer than the X2 3800+ but is also more expensive, thankfully for the E6300's sake it is also faster than the 4200+ and the 4600+ in some benchmarks. Overall the E6300 is a better buy, but at stock speeds the advantage isn't nearly as great as the faster Core 2 parts. In many benchmarks the X2 4200+ isn't that far off the E6300's performance, sometimes even outperforming it at virtually the same price. Overclocking changes everything though, as our 2.592GHz E6300 ended up faster than AMD's FX-62 in almost every single benchmark. If you're not an overclocker, then the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ looks to be a competitive alternative to the Core 2 E6300.
The E6400 finds itself in between the X2 4200+ and X2 4600+ in price, but in performance the E6400 generally lands in between the 4600+ and 5000+. Once again, with these 2MB parts the performance advantage isn't nearly as impressive as with the 4MB parts (partly due to the fact that their native clock speed is lower, in addition to the smaller L2 cache), but even with AMD's new price cuts the Core 2 is still very competitive at worst. If you're not opposed to overclocking, then the E6400 can offer you more than you can get from any currently shipping AMD CPU - our chip managed an effortless 2.88GHz overclock which gave us $1000 CPU performance for $224.
There are two potential concerns with building a budget Core 2 Duo system. The first is availability, and hopefully we will have a clear answer on that subject in the near future. The other is motherboard cost. The ASUS P5W-DH we used in this article is currently the best overclocking motherboard we've seen for the socket 775 platform, but at $250 it is anything but cheap. We have seen quite a few of the P965 motherboards that can also overclock the budget Core 2 chips to reasonable levels, with prices hovering much closer to $140. Unfortunately, none of those boards can support SLI or CrossFire at present.
If you are simply interested in maximum processor performance, P965 with any of the Core 2 Duo parts is going to be very fast. Gamers on the other hand are probably going to at least want to think about SLI/CrossFire, as typical gaming settings will be GPU limited with just about any current single GPU. That means they might need to pay more for an appropriate motherboard, especially if overclocking is a primary concern. We're also waiting to find out how nForce 500 for Intel does in the overclocking arena; at present, there's definitely concerns about whether or not the NVIDIA motherboards can reach the high FSB speeds that are required for overclocking everything but the X6800.
The E6300 and E6400 can easily overclock to E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 levels, though the smaller cache does limit performance a bit. That being said, our overclocked E6300 was able to equal and in all cases but one outperform AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62. In fact, in quite a few benchmarks, the overclocked E6300 is essentially out of reach of anything AMD can offer with their current K8 designs. At $183, the value here is tremendous, and if you're willing to overclock the benefits don't get any clearer than that.
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mkruer - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Interesting enough once you go to 1600x1200 with all the bells and whistles on, the CPU is the least of your worries. Even the AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ performs with in 10% of the highest Conroe. LOLcgrecu77 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
sadly anandtech looks like its following on tom hardware's path of intel biased reviews. Sure, the bias IS NOT blatant, but still.Obviously conroe is faster than amd (by ~20%) and overclocking proves nothing, both athlon and conroe have about the same room for overclocking and probably the performance difference will remain the same.
The fact is that cost/performance definitely is on the amd side right now as the X2-3800 +mb + ram is probably more than 20% cheaper than the core and offers almost the same performance in games (most people care about that, I know I only look at gaming bechmarks). Not to mention that after going the dual core route I would definitely recommend people to NOT buy a dual core now, but stick with a single core 3700+ (or 3800 if the 3700 cannot be find anymore). For ~100$ with minimal overclocking and KEEPING your mb AND memory you will get similar performance in games (unless you ACTUALLY play at 800x600) with a much more expensive system from intel/amd. It only makes sense to buy conroe if you're going high end and you want the maximum performance you can get.
Dual core is NOT worth it on a home computer. Anybody that says differently haa no clue.
OcHungry - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I don’t get this review? is it about just overclocking conroe or is it about which platform gives you better price/performance?If it is about overclocking conroe, then why are there AMD CPU's listed?
and why aren’t AMD's overclocked?
If it is about overclocking and price performance, then why aren’t AMD's overclocked and why aint we considering the motherboards?
Today you can buy a good "SLI" AM2 motherboard for less than $150 and A64 3800 x2 for $155 and overclock the hell of it. I have seen up to 3ghz easy.
you can buy 2 cheap SLI cards ($85 each) and build a hell of a system.
That is $450 for CPU+mobo+2SLI cards.
Can E6300/6400 do that? NO. For one, you have to buy a $250 motherboard hoping Nvedia will release SLI drivers to Intel.
I am very disappointed at Mr. Anand and this whole outfit.
Mr. Anand, you know, there are AMD users that will question the merit and integrity of this article. Why are you doing this? why didn’t you show any AMD's overclocked? And why aren’t you giving the readers the total package? If it’s about overclocking low end conroe alone, the what are AMD’s doing there? And not overclocked? Is this article for stupid readers?
I mean, I am not trying to offend reader’s intelligence, but this article sure does.
Are you and AMD in some kind of friction? it sure seems that way?
goinginstyle - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Dear OC-Sharikou,I noticed you have moved on without answering our objective points on the memory article. Let's recap, you were fired from Intel with cause, you are bitter because of it, and will take any opportunity to slam any positive results from Intel. You have an issue with Anand that you have never explained but it is obvious you are extremely jealous or maybe you have a crush on him and was upset he married someone else.
Did you read the title and text? Do you have the ability to read 12 pages of written text or do the pretty graphs throw you off?
Please get up on your mother's lap and have her read you the story again. This time pay attention and put your bottle down.
See the above statement. Even if you overclocked the AMD cpu's and placed them on the space shuttle for launch they are not going to approach Conroe when overclocked also. Get over it, dude.
Good point, in a month or so you will be able to do the same with Conroe. The problem once again with your statement is that you have seen these overclocks. Since you do not actually own these processors then you have no idea what the hell you are spewing. Look in your diaper, that is the same crap you are spreading around here.
If you knew how to read, then you would know nvidia is launching Intel SLI boards under a $100 next month.
I am a AMD user and I am ashamed of your comments. Read through Anand's previous AMD and P4 articles and you will understand how fair this site is unlike others. If he shows the AMD CPUs overclocked and they still do not perform as well as Conroe then what type of bulls&$! are you going to post. You already tried calculations yesterday that blew up in your face. You are consistent, consistently WRONG.
How much does AMD pay you for your daily trash blog and to post this crap at AnandTech?
In conclusion-
Conroe owns AM2 - Get over It!
jjunos - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
LOL!!lol sorry, that was a great response!! haha
I have to agree with the above poster....while I guess I'm a bit pro AMD, what I cant' stand is amd freaks bashing anand for his reviews. Do all you amd freaks really think that when K8L comes out, that he won't do just as many indepth reviews of that?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
As I stated in the review, the only AM2 CPUs (non EE/EE SFF, those will be looked at in a later article) we have on hand are a X2 5000+ and a FX-62. Overclocking either one of those is not representative of how a X2 3800+ overclocks, so it doesn't make sense to include those numbers as we're talking about overclocking on the low end. As I also mentioned in the review, most people are able to reach anywhere between 2.4 and 2.8GHz with their X2 3800+ CPUs without much effort, which we already happen to have numbers for in the review. What we didn't know prior to today was how the 2MB cache Conroes performed at higher clock speeds, this was the point of today's article.As far as your concerns about budget go, our article agrees with your point on motherboard cost. From the conclusion:
"There are two potential concerns with building a budget Core 2 Duo system. The first is availability, and hopefully we will have a clear answer on that subject in the near future. The other is motherboard cost. The ASUS P5W-DH we used in this article is currently the best overclocking motherboard we've seen for the socket 775 platform, but at $250 it is anything but cheap. We have seen quite a few of the P965 motherboards that can also overclock the budget Core 2 chips to reasonable levels, with prices hovering much closer to $140. Unfortunately, none of those boards can support SLI or CrossFire at present."
As far as I can tell, all of your issues were addressed in the review itself. Let me know if there's something I missed.
Take care,
Anand
jjunos - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
*sigh*Seriously guys. They already state this.
True, I would have loved to have seen them have an overclocked 3800 directly for comparison, but really, I've seen all the articles I need to see on overclocking X2's. I don't think the point was to show AMD in a bad light, they were showing how the intels overclock. Looks good, but the AMD are just too cheap now to say no! :D
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
For the record, our OC results for E6300/E6400 are *very* conservative. Stock cooling means you should easily reach these results, and anyone that spends $30-$50 on an aftermarket cooler can surpass them without batting an eye. On AM2, it's all about core clock, with maybe a 5% difference from HTT/RAM settings. 2.6 GHz with a 3800+ is reasonable (though a bit iffy with stock HSF), so you can get 5000+ performance (which is shown). Throwing in better cooling *might* get 2.8 GHz, but even that is questionable without watercooling or phase. FX-62 on air can probably get 3.0-3.2 GHz, which is still going to be slower in most cases than E6300 OC.That said, X2 with less expensive motherboards is still viable, and I will be buying a couple chips for systems in the near future. If you have motherboards that support X2, it's even more attractive. Going from 939 3000+ to 939 4200+ for $189 is a tremendous upgrade, and you can OC to about 2.6-2.8 GHz. Is that *competitive*? Absolutely! Is it faster than what you can get with Core 2 if you're buying a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU? Nope, but then for many people it doesn't have to be. From page 6:
Take care,
Jarred Walton
bere - Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - link
The 5000+ that U have there is a FSB200. U compare a FSB 200 with 370 FSB.jjunos - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Since apparently you're opinion defines the world, what exactly is dual core good for?Really, this amd fanboi crap has seriously gotten out of hand lately. I love amd. But the FUD that you guys have been spewing lately is just garbage. In games, the fastest cpu wins, true, but that won't be the case in the future (and even now there are games that take advantage of dual core). In normal usage? Hell yes does dual core matter! The biggest upgraded I've seen in the last 10 years on my home box was when I went from 1cpu to dual cpu.
From day to day usage, other users on my computer, everything. I love it.
Actually, when I started a new job and they only offered me a 1 cpu box, it killed me.
Once you go dual core, you can't go back!