Pricing

Is the Core 2 Duo aka Conroe better than sliced bread? A resounding "yes" is the answer. Performance is phenomenal and this without turning your case into a small oven, Intel delivered a cool and fast CPU here today. The only thing which might still spoil the party is the price, if the bread is delicious but too expensive, nobody will eat it (or something), pricing information has been revealed already and below we compare them to the other contenders in todays's bout

Using the Dutch Pricewatch I've looked up the actual prices for the chips, including some other models from the series. As you can see we've had the opportunity to play with very expensive hardware. But there are also cheaper versions available.

Intel Pentium D CPU

Intel Pentium 4 D 940 Dual Core (S775, 3.2 GHz, 800MHz, 2x2MB, Boxed) - ? 213,95

Intel Pentium 4 D 950 Dual Core (S775, 3.4 GHz, 800MHz, 2x2MB,Boxed) - ? 299,90

Intel Pentium 4 D 955 EE Dual Core (S775, 3.46GHz, 1066MHz, 2x2MB, Boxed) - ? 937,10

Intel Pentium 4 D 960 Dual Core (S775, 3.6 GHz, 800MHz, 2x2MB,Boxed) - ? 496

Intel Pentium 4 D 965 Dual Core (S775, 3.73 GHz, 800MHz, 2x2MB,Boxed) - ? 939,42


Intel Core Duo Mobile CPU

Intel Core Duo T2300 (S478, 1.66GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB, Boxed) - ? 202,93

Intel Core Duo T2400 (S478, 1.83GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB, Boxed) - ? 226,68

Intel Core Duo T2500 (S478, 2GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB, Boxed) - ? 276,63

Intel Core Duo T2600 (S478, 2.16GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB, Boxed) - ? 396,67

Intel Core Duo T2700 (S479, 2.33Ghz, 667Mhz, Boxed) ? 601,41


Intel Core 2 Duo CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (S775, 1,86GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2MB Boxed) - ? 182,99

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (S775, 2,13GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2MB Boxed) - ? 219,80

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (S775, 2,4GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB Boxed) - ? 307,02

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (S775, 2,67GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB Boxed) - ? 508,42

Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme (S775, 2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB, Boxed) - ? 939,42

Mainboards I've used today

AOpen I975Xa-YDG, i975X (ATX, PCI-e, Sound, LAN, SATA II, RAID, 1394) - ? 243,28 for Core Duo

Intel D975XBX, i975X (ATX, PCI-e, Sound, LAN, SATA II) - ? 228 for Core 2 Duo and Pentium D

At the time of doing this review I unfortunately had no up to date AMD test setup to do comparison tests, however AMD should not be dismissed so prices for their current high(er) end line-up are included:

AMD X2 and FX

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (AM2, 2,0GHz, 2x512KB, 89W, Boxed) - ? 273,97

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (AM2, 2,0 GHz, 2x1MB, Boxed) - ? 301,57

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (AM2, 2,2GHz, 2x512KB, Boxed) - ? 338,42

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (AM2, 2,2GHz, 2x1MB, Boxed) - ? 421,33

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (AM2, 2.4GHz, 2x512KB, Boxed) - ? 518,52

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (AM2, 2,4GHz, 2x1MB, Boxed) - ? 583,02

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (AM2, 2.6GHz, 2x512KB, Boxed) - ? 569,93

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (AM2, 2.8GHz, 2x1MB, Boxed) - ? 968,94

Do note that AMD will announce price drops shortly after the Core 2 launch. The two AMD CPUs outlined in bold above are faster than the Pentium D 955 in many benchmarks as can be seen here and here. Yet the current AMD FX-62 is no match for the newer Core 2.

Conclusion

In my tests today I focused more on overclocking and power consumption, using one of the first samples available in Benelux there is already quite a margin, with silent air cooling and default voltage I managed to get an ~500Mhz overclock from both X6800 and E6700 CPUs. Combine this with acceptable power consumption and the Core 2 is hard not to recommend.

It will be interesting to see how the lower rated E6300 and E6400 stack up since they have only half the L2 cache available, a performance preview can be seen here at Matbe, comparing 2Mb vs 4Mb L2 at same clock speeds.

To sum up our thoughts, short and sweet:

Intel Core 2 comes


Recommended!

Special thanks to Kristof from Intel Benelux for providing us the hardware needed for testing.

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