Thursday, October 23, 2008

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Processor Reviewed

e8400 image The Intel 2 Core Duo E8600 (US$266) has the following features:

  • 3.33GHz Clock Speed with dual processing cores (dual-core)
  • 1333MHz front-side bus
  • 10.0 fixed clock multiplier
  • 6MB unified L2 cache
  • 45nm technology
  • 107mm2 die size, 410M transistors
  • SSE4 instructions
  • Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
  • Intel 64 Technology
  • Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
  • Supports Execute Disable Bit (XD)
  • LGA-775 socket interface
  • Intel Trusted Execution Technology
  • 0.850v - 1.3625v Core Voltage
  • 65W Max TDP

"... If you're the type of user who spends a lot of time with video encoding and other apps like Photoshop and Premiere and not so much gaming, a dual-core CPU like the E8600 probably won't do despite its 3.33GHz clock speed. ... Gamers however that don't dabble with these apps would be well served by the E8600. It has an enormous amount of headroom for overclocking, blazing clock speed, and consumes less power than comparably priced quad-core CPUs from AMD and Intel. ... If it were my money though I'd probably save the cash and get an E8400. Based on today's Newegg pricing, going from an E8600 to an E8400 would save $105." [FiringSquad | Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Review ]

The E8600 is a nice dual-core processor with good clock speed and overclocking potential. As FiringSquad suggests, maybe an E8400 (3.0GHz) will suffice, if you really don't need the 3.33GHz clock speed.

IceRocket : , , , ,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, what processor would you get if you spent a lot of time in Photoshop and video editing?

ced said...

Hi Jim. Hypothetically, it should be the fastest quad-core processor money can buy. In the real world, it would be the fastest multi-core CPU you could afford. Transcoding time will definitely depend on your processing power. ;-)