Jason Dunn
10-12-2006, 11:15 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/10/cheap_thrills/index.html' target='_blank'>http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/10/cheap_thrills/index.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Everyone expects a multi-thousand dollar PC to perform well, but most of us have bills to pay. Intel's gift to the frugal is a Core 2 Duo processor with half the cache for around two-thirds the cash. To drive home the point that Allendale-core (E6300 and E6400) Core 2 Duos are for cheapskates, Intel also cuts the frequency for a double performance hit almost worthy of the former Celeron name, if not for the high-bandwidth 1066 (266 MHz) Front Side Bus. Low-cost processors have always lent themselves well to overclocking in the past. This is because all processors in a given family are created equal. Each wafer holds a few hundred processor dies, which, after going through functional tests, are turned into actual products. Whether a die becomes a Core 2 Duo E6500 or E6700 processor mostly depends on customer demand today. Since entry-level processors originate from the same source as that of high-end devices, they usually have the same overclocking potential as well.For entry-level Core 2 Duo devices with only 2-MB instead of 4-MB L2 cache, we might not be able to replace the missing cache, but we can certainly increase the clock rate. Can a simple speed increase overcome the cache deficit? What performance can you expect from an overclocked Core 2 Duo?"</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/tomshardware-6400oc_photo.jpg" /><br /><br />I can always rely on Tom's Hardware for the most insane overclocking articles around - this one is particularly interesting to me seeing as I'm looking as a Core 2 Duo-based system in Q1 of next year - or maybe even a quad-based system. We'll see...