Conclusion
All in all Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors made a great entrance. They have pushed the performance of budget solutions to a totally new level. With the price of less than $90 and promising Core micro-architecture these processors can become a great basis for contemporary low-cost systems. From this standpoint they look much better than the Pentium D processors on NetBurst micro-architecture that used to be the only offering for this segment.
Of course, the performance level of Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors doesn抰 look at mind-blowing as that of their Core 2 Duo counterparts. Their relatively low clock frequencies and L2 cache cut down to only 1MB do their 揹irty deed? However, in the majority of real applications these processors outperform all alternative solutions. Although I have to specify something here. When we speak of comparatively high performance of these new processors, it is important to keep in mind that they still lose to the youngest Athlon 64 X2 models in most games where the size of L2 cache memory matters a lot.
However, the results of our overclocking experiments can make all your doubts vanish. Since Pentium E2160 and E2140 are based on Allendale L2 core stepping these CPUs will overclock approximately to the same frequencies as Core 2 Duo E4000 series. As a result, if you are lucky enough you may be able to get your new processor to work as fast as the top of the line dual-core Core 2 Extreme processors, which is a very good deal considering it will cost you less than $100.
