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
The Test
The performance results in this review are largely the same as those from our earlier Core 2 review. However, there are a few changes to the test configuration that are worth noting:
- The E6300/E6400 were run on the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe as it is a better motherboard for overclocking than the Intel D975X. Performance differences between the Intel and ASUS boards are negligible and thus the results are directly comparable to one another.
- The E6300 numbers in this review are a bit higher than in our last review because we are using a B1 stepping E6300, compared to the A1 stepping E6300 used in our previous article. The A1 CPU we used in the last article was a pre-production chip, while the B1 CPUs we're using here today are production CPUs that offer slightly better performance in some cases. All other Core 2 and Core 2 Extreme CPUs in this article are all B1 or later.
- As we mentioned earlier, we did not have a Socket-AM2 X2 3800+ on hand that we could use for overclocking results, but you can get an idea of what an overclocked X2 3800+ would perform like by looking at the performance results for the X2 4600+, 5000+ and the FX-62. We looked at Athlon 64 X2 3800+ overclocking in the past on socket 939, and we would expect the AM2 chips to overclock similarly.
- We've eliminated all of the Pentium D lineup from the bar graphs except for the Pentium EE 965, which is included as a reference point.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz/1MBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KBx2) Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (3.73GHz/2MBx2) Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2MB) |
| Motherboard: | MSI K9A Platinum (Socket AM2) ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (LGA-775) |
| Chipset: | ATI RD580 Intel 975X |
| Chipset Drivers: | Catalyst 6.6 (ATI) Intel 7.2.2.1007 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | 2 x ATI Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.6 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz (1600 x 1200 for games) |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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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