Testbed and Methods

Our choice of the candidates for the new round of dual-core processor tests was solely based on the new pricing. So today we are going to have all dual-core CPUs from the sub-$230 price range after April 22 face-to-face with one another. We didn’t want to overload the results charts, so we excluded the performance numbers for the CPUs that will no longer be a reasonable purchase after the upcoming price reductions. That is why you will not see the results for Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 as well as Athlon 64 4600+ and 4200+.

We have already discussed the performance of these processors in detail in our article called Core 2 Duo E6420, E6320 and E4400 Plus Another 15 Sub-$200 Dual-Core Processors. We have also excluded Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 from our testing participants list. The thing is that this processor is too fast an expensive, so there is no competitor for it in the AMD’s product range. Nevertheless, you can get an idea about the performance of this processor compared against the competitors from our article called AMD Conquering 3GHz: Athlon 64 X2 6000+ CPU Review.

Here is the list of all hardware including the full list of participating processors that was used in our test session:

• CPUs:
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (Socket AM2, 2.8GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (Socket AM2, 2.6GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (Socket AM2, 2.6GHz, 2x512KB L2, Windsor);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Socket AM2, 2.5GHz, 2x512KB L2, Brisabane);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (Socket AM2, 2.3GHz, 2x512KB L2, Brisabane);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (Socket AM2, 2.1GHz, 2x512KB L2, Brisabane);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Socket AM2, 2.0GHz, 2x512KB L2, Windsor);
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ (Socket AM2, 1.9GHz, 2x512KB L2, Brisabane);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (LGA775, 2.4GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 (LGA775, 2.13GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 (LGA775, 1.86GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (LGA775, 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2, Allendale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (LGA775, 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2, Allendale);
  • Pentium D 935 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x2MB L2, Presler);
  • Pentium D 925 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x2MB L2, Presler).
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI);
  • ASUS P5N-E SLI (LGA775, NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI).
• Memory: 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12);
• Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB;
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit).

We ran the tests with the BIOS Setup of the mainboards adjusted for maximum performance.