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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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)?