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
Gaming Performance using F.E.A.R. & Rise of Legends
Our F.E.A.R. test should be fairly familiar by now, as it is the built in performance test included with the game. Computer settings were left at "Maximum" while the graphics settings were set to "High" with the resolution cranked up to 1600 x 1200. F.E.A.R. ends up still being more GPU than CPU bound at these settings, even with a pair of X1900 XTs at its disposal, but we do see some separation among the processors:
We mentioned that F.E.A.R. is more GPU limited than many other titles, but without antialiasing enabled the spread is still 42%. As with many other games, the Core 2 Duo chips outperformed their AMD counterparts in terms of price/performance. However, it's questionable how many people would purchase a $200 CPU to pair up with over $1200 worth of motherboard and graphics cards. That doesn't mean the Core 2 Duo isn't faster, but you will certainly need a very powerful graphics chip in order to realize the potential. On the flip side, the extremely strong performance of an overclocked E6300/E6400 means you can spent more money on your graphics setup if you're a gamer and get close enough to the speed of a X6800 through overclocking to drive those high end GPUs.
Rise of Legends is a newcomer to our game benchmark suite and what an excellent addition it is. This Real Time Strategy game looks very good and plays well too; it serves as good filler until the next Command & Conquer title eventually arrives for those looking for an RTS fix. We ran with the resolution set to 1600 x 1200 and the graphics settings set to the medium defaults. We recorded a custom demo of a 3 vs. 2 multiplayer battle and played it back at 4x speed, recording the average frame rate for 10 minutes of the battle. The 10 minutes we focused on contained a good mix of light skirmishes between opponents, base/resource management with very few characters on the screen and of course some very large scale battles. As with most RTSes, Rise of Legends is extremely CPU bound. The performance variability between runs was fairly high in this test, mainly because of how disk intensive the playback can get. Differences in performance of up to 5% should be ignored.
Rise of Legends is clearly a game that demands a lot from the processor, and the additional cache in the 4MB Core 2 Duo chips also appears to have more of an impact in this game than in other games. The only Core 2 chip that AMD's FX-62 is able to beat is the "budget" E6300. If other RTS games perform similarly, strategy gamers will definitely want to upgrade to Core 2. Once again we see that overclocking the E6300 and E6400 get you fairly close to the higher end E6700 and X6800 Core 2 processors; with performance like this, why bother spending any more on a faster Core 2 CPU?
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jonp - Sunday, September 2, 2007 - link
The text above the chart for the E6400 says 2.88GHz at 360 MHz FSB at 1.350V (with a multiplier of 8).The chart however shows 1.312V; which is what my stock E6400 runs at.
So what's up?
Killer4Hire - Sunday, October 29, 2006 - link
I agree about your test making the AMD cpu's look none overclocking and at the crazy price of DDR2 ram and the MOBO i just don,t see the bang here..My 3800+ X2 non AM2 on Cheap DDR ram can,t bring it also and make the FX62 look bad.. at 2.6Ghz it scored 7232points in 3Dmark05 cpu test on cheap DDR at a $45Mobo.. where dose that put me in your chart?? oh i am sure she could do 3.0Ghz also..
sergejvictorov - Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - link
Can anyone help me as to what RAM clockspeed I need to buy in order to overclock the E6300 on an ASUS P5B Deluxe board to - let's say - 2.592 GHz? Is DDR2-675 from Corsair sufficient? Thanks in advanceNfarce - Friday, July 28, 2006 - link
Hey look, I was about to plunk down serious bux for an X2 setup to replace my aging P4 o'clkd 3.6xx system (that replaced an Athlon prior, that replaced a PIII prior.. blah blah). Don't you bedwetters know that this give and take is cool for everyone? No, I guess not for EVERYONE. I guess not for those butt pirates with their heads stuck so far up AMD's @ss that they can't see anything but "bias" in a review that shows FACTS. That's ok AMD girlz, take your soccer balls and go home now after trashing Anandtech. Don't forget to dry out your pretty pink wet panties.aznskickass - Saturday, July 29, 2006 - link
Man you are the thickest fanboy I have ever seen.Since you obviously have no interest in E6300 overclocking whatsoever, and will therefore have no fcuking clue what you're talking about, let me enlighten you:
E6300s with Gigabyte DS3 boards are hitting 3.3 - 3.5GHz on air cooling. Check XS forums if you don't believe me. That is the equivalent of an X2 @ 4.1 - 4.4GHz. What are your beloved X2 3800+s getting? 2.8GHz? 3GHz if you're lucky?
That means, with the right mobo, an o/ced E6300 can outperform an o/ced 3800+ by at LEAST 25%.
You just got owned fanboy. Get a clue FFS.
deathwalker - Friday, July 28, 2006 - link
So how long will it take AMD to come up with a competitive response to the Core 2 Duo? Or better yet...do they even have a competitive response in the pipeline?snorre - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
It was nice knowing you, at least uptil Intel bought you lock, stock and barrel. After reading your latest reviews I have no doubts left in my mind, you're officially gone the THG route. I used to be a lojal reader and both linked and recommended your site to other people for unbiased information, but I will stop doing this now for obvious reasons. I hope you'll wake up and smell the coffee soon before you loose any more readers. Good-bye!goinginstyle - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
So what are they suppose to do? Lie about Conroe's performance? You are one of the biggest AMD fanbois around, sometimes it hurts but suck it up as Intel won this round. There was not anything biased about this article or their coverage. They have been just as big AMD fans as Intel fans since the website started. Leave if you must, but do not do it because the numbers tell the truth.najames - Friday, July 28, 2006 - link
Oh boy, oh boy I want to buy one of these Conroe's right now. I'm gonna order one.Hmm, Newegg doesn't have them, Monarch doesn't have them, it seems nobody has them.
Why are we worrying about comparing vaporware to something that has been out for a long time. Why don't we just compare the Conroe to an upcoming AMD 4x4 then? It's all vaporware then at least.
Oh and let's make sure we compare lots of 64bit stuff too, after all there has been 64bit OSs around for about 15 years now.
Gary Key - Saturday, July 29, 2006 - link
I ordered two from Tiger Direct and one from ZipZoomFly. No issues, received one today and the other two on Monday. :)