INTEL Core 2 Duo E6400 Dual Core Processor

For the past few years AMD's FX line of CPUs have held the performance crown for high-end desktop processors, with Intel a fairly large step behind. Over the past few months, Intel has been finalizing the release of their newest desktop processor line, and on July 27th, 2006, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini stood on-stage at Intel HQ and held up his company's newest product, the Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor.

Manufactured on a 65-nanometer architecture, Core 2 Duo, also known around the web as "Conroe" or "Allendale", packs 291 million transistors into an area about the size of a fingernail. Core 2 Duo features a 12-stage pipe-line, versus previous Netburst Pentium™ D and Pentium 4 architecture which featured around 32 stages. Powerful pre-fetch buffers are part of what makes Core 2 Duo so fast, and a default 1066MHz FSB boosts overall system performance. Before Core 2 Duo, the1066MHz FSB was featured only on the premium priced Pentium Extreme Edition CPUs. Core 2 Duo E6400 (Allendale Core) packs dual processor cores which are fed by a shared 2MB of L2 cache. Today HardwareLogic kicks off a series of articles showcasing the Core 2 Duo line with a look at the Core 2 Duo E6400.

Allendale is code-name for the budget minded Core 2 Duo models, the E6300 and E6400. What seperates these two from the Conroe core, aside from the multiplier, is 2MB of cache for the Allendale processors vs. 4MB of cache found on the Conroe processors.

Core 2 Duo also has a considerably lower TDP than previous Pentium D Processors. What this means is that Core 2 Duo CPUs require around 33% less power than the Pentium D series, all while being more powerful than any other desktop processor available today.

The Core 2 Duo E6400, as with all Core 2 Duo CPUs, are fit into the same package as previous Pentium D processors However, it's what's inside that matters here. The markings on our E6400 clearly indicate a manufacturing origin of Malaysia. The Stepping or revision is SL9S9.

Here we have the backside of the CPU that locks into the LGA socket and we can see the LGA-775 contacts. The Core 2 Duo looks almost visually identical to previous LGA-775 processors except the resistors are different. Intel has been with the LGA-socket for a few years now and we see no plans to change in the near future in any of their roadmaps.

Intel's stock cooling solution has remained essentially unchanged since the heyday of the Prescott core. Besides slight variations in height, diameter, and the thickness of the copper core, the Core 2 Duo HSF is nothing new. One of the nicest benefits of the Core 2 Duo architecture is its low power draw. The E6400's low TDP of a measly 65w (compared to the Prescott's TDP of over 100w) means that you don't need a massive heat-sink for adequate cooling.

Not only is the stock heatsink adequate at stock speeds, but we were able to reach 3GHz with a minor voltage bump. While we still prefer aftermarket cooling solutions, it is nice that a $50 or more HSF is no longer a prerequisite for overclocking. Needless to say we were blown away by the efficiency of this architecture.

During our overclocking quest, our motherboard seemed to be the limiting factor in the end, failing to post after around 380MHz FSB. With our Zalman CNPS-9500AT, our temperatures never got over 50C during full load at 3.0GHz. We are quite sure that this chip has headroom to clock beyond 3GHz in a higher-end motherboard. The 3GHz overclock we achieved, however, is certainly nothing to sniff at, making it faster then even the X6800, also known as the fastest consumer processor currently available. $1000 performance for a pinch over $200? That sounds like a good deal to us.

The best part about it is that these results are fairly typical, and, though overclock success is never a sure thing, most users can expect to be able to squeeze a fair chunk of free performance out of this chip.