Conroe on a budget: Core 2 Duo E6400 test

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Intel Core 2 Duo  

With the introduction of the Core 2 Duo Intel has managed to change the status quo for the desktop processor market and retaken the performance crown. The last couple of years gamers and overclockers alike swore their allegiance to AMD and their Athlon 64 processor range, the tables have now turned and the Core 2 Duo's are selling like hot cakes. In the past we've talked about the Core 2 Duo architecture and tested the top end models, the X6800, E6700 and the E6600. To complement the current Core 2 Duo's with 4 MB L2-cache, Intel has also released three budget models with only 2MB of L2-cache. Up until now our estimations of the performance of the budget-Conroe's were mainly based on guesswork, but we've finally been able to get our hands on the Core 2 Duo E6400 running at 2.13GHz with 2 MB cache. Currently available for a price of roughly $ 240, the E6400 could form the ideal basis for building a high performance, but low cost computer system. Comparing the price of Core 2 Duo E6400 to various other processors on the market we find that E6400 is fractionally cheaper than the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and comparable to the Pentium D 950, hence we compared these three to see which would give us more bang for our buck.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400

List of all Core 2 Duo models

Benchmarks

We ran the Core 2 Duo E6400 through the same gamut of tests that we used for all our recently tested processors. The system we used for testing the Conroe was built around latest revision of Intels D975XBX 'Bad Axe' motherboard. The test system also consisted of 1 GB (2 x 512MB) of Corsair DDR2-800 memory, an nVidia Geforce 7800 GTX video card and a Western Digital Raptor 74 GB hard disk. The system setup for the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Socket AM2 processors consisted of a Foxconn C51XEM2AA Motherboard based on the nVidia nForce 590 SLI chipset. The motherboard used for benchmarking the older Intel processors was the ASUS P5WD2-E Premium which, just like the Conroe system, is based on the Intel 975X chipset. To remove any possible variables we kept the all the other system components identical for each test setup.

Test results

If we look at the various graphs on the next page and compare the performance of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and the Intel D950, we see that the E6400 outperforms the competition in all but one test. The E6400 even manages to outperform its rivals in most tests by a margin of 25%! When looking at the gaming benchmarks we see the Core 2 Duo E6400 really shine. Our FarCry x64 benchmark on the E6400 setup ran at 108,1 fps, 25% faster than the Athlon X2 4200+ and a whopping 42% faster than the Pentium D950! In the Quake 4 SMP the differences in performance were even more astronomical. In this test the E6400 manages to outperform the Pentium D 950 by 80%.

Conclusion

If you've read the above there will be no doubt in your mind what our conclusion will be, the performance of the Core 2 Duo E6400 is unparalleled. The E6400 outperforms its similarly priced rivals in almost every benchmark. We do notice the performance difference between the E6400 and its bigger brothers the E6600 and the E6700 due to the 2 MB L2-cache but nonetheless the Core 2 Duo has shown that it's a great performer. The bottom line is that we can seriously recommend the E6400 to anyone looking for an affordable PC within the 675 to 1,000 pound range.