Budget Core 2 Duo

This month, Intel will release Core 2 Duo E4XXX series, budget core 2 duo family processors. The cheapest E4300, will be sold at about U$163, about B$245. It's estimated it's price will drop further to U$133 after 6 months, making it more cheaper. The release of Intel Core 2 Duo E4XXX series processors may cause the price Pentium 4 and D series processors to drop and probably eliminated by Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad this year. In this new year of 2007, we had actually stepped in an era of dual core processors.

Core 2 Duo E6320 and E6420 will be release during Q2 this year to replace existing E6300 and E6400. The new E6320 and E6420 have an increase of L2 cache size from 2MB to 4MB, their clock speed and other details will not change. Price also remains the same. Core 2 Duo processors with 1333Mhz FSB will also release into market during Q2 this year.

The new Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 is running at 1.8 Ghz, having 2MB L2 cache and FSB 800Mhz. According the review from AnandTech, it's a very good overclocking cpu, they manage to overclock it to 3.37Ghz and it's performance close to Core 2 Extreme X6800. By spending a few hundred dollars, we can enjoy the performance similar to X6800, really worth it :-)

Recommended Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300
ASUS P5B
2x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 RAM
HIS RadeonX1950 Pro
Segate 250GB 16MB buffer HDD

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 before overclocking:



Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 after overclocking: