Performance

SYSMark 2004 SE: Overall Performance

The first tests show that the Core 2 Duo E4300 on the Allendale core doesn't greatly differ in speed from the Core 2 Duo E6300. The 66MHz difference in clock rate coupled with the slower FSB leads to a small difference in performance, about 2-4%.

Note also the good results of the Pentium D 945 processor. Intel has cut prices on its CPUs with the NetBurst micro-architecture, so they are now a worthy alternative to Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2, except in terms of power consumption. But let's be frank, the Pentium D 945 is still somewhat slower than the junior Core 2 Duo models.

Futuremark: Synthetic Tests

Surprisingly, it's the Pentium D 954 that takes the lead in both tests from Futuremark. The Core 2 Duo E4300 is 1-3% slower than the Core 2 Duo E6300. That's just as we have expected.

The overclocked Core 2 Duo E4300 is impressive: clocked at 3.42GHz, it is 10-15% faster than the Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800 despite having half the amount of cache memory!