THE GLITCH REVIEWS
This is a review of the Intel E8600 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo Processor.
INFORMATION
This product was reviewed by The Glitch on the 07-09-2008
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Intel E8600 The Intel Core 2 Duo processor will provide enhanced performance and energy efficiency in mobile applications while bringing for the first time the benefits of energy-efficient performance to mainstream desktop computing. All Core 2 Duo chips have two execution cores in one physical processor, The E8600 comes with 6MB L2 Cache and operates with a 1333MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). It also has EM64T allowing access to larger amounts of memory and will support 64-bit extended operating systems. |
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The chip operates with at 1333Mhz FSB (Front Side Bus) so it's only compatible with motherboards that are designed around Intel's later chipsets i.e. the G33, G35, P35, Q33, Q35, X38, P45, G45, G43, X48 or P43 chipsets, and even then a motherboard BIOS update maybe required to correctly recognise it. The E8600 has a level 2 cache of 6MB which is a noteworthy increase from the 4MB on previous versions, but one of the most significant improvements is the fact that the whole chip has been manufactured using 45nm technology, thus significantly reducing it's overall thermal design power or TDP to just 65Watts, which means the whole chip is able to run both faster and cooler. |
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Using a 'Zalman Aero Flower' cooler and some decent silver based thermal transfer compound, I was able to increase the FSB to 400MHz and achieve a 4.0GHz stable over-clock. I did have to increase the Vcore to 1.30 volts, but this is still within the maximum 1.36volts specified by Intel. CPU temperatures, when idle, were around 40 degrees Celsius, and rose to around 54 degrees Celsius when under full load. Again well within the maximum 74.5 degrees Celsius specified by Intel. The above represented a healthy 12% over-clock, but there are already reports of people achieving significantly higher clock speeds using water cooling, which just goes to prove how far these chips can be pushed. |
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Now to performance, I'm not going to dwell too long on benchmarks, as there are many other sites out there that have tested the E8600 to death, but I did perform a couple of my own tests: Using SiSoftware's
'Sandra Lite XII.SP2c' I achieved the following results: The last test is a little subjective, as factors such as hard drive, memory and chipset speeds come into play, but I have still included it as an indicator to the boost a system can gain when utilising a faster processor. I used a zip file that contained 1,736
files totaling 34,750,464 bytes. On a standard 1.86GHz
Core 2 Duo it took around 39 seconds to extract all the
files, but on my over-clocked E8600 is took just 8
seconds. |
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Advantages: Very fast dual core processor |
Disadvantages: Requires a modern Intel chipset |
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Conclusion: At a time when quad core processors are getting cheaper every month, some would argue that buying dual core chips no longer makes sense, but when you consider that most software still does not make full use of more than two cores then the move to a quad core processor doesn't seem so necessary. If you want the fastest dual core chip then the E8600 is for you and if you're into over-clocking then your not going to be disappointed with your results. Ultimately only the price tag stops this chip from getting a '5 Star Glitch Award'. |
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The Glitch Star Award |
Overall Score 80% |
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