Testbed and Methods

To check out the performance of the new Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400 and E8200 processors and compare their speed against that of their predecessors, we put together a few systems including the following hardware components:

AMD Platform:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor).
• Mainboard: ASUS M2R32-MVP (Socket AM2, AMD 580X).
• Memory: 2GB DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12-1T timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.

Intel Platform:

• CPUs:
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (LGA775, 3.16GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe).
• Mainboard: ASUS P5E (LGA775, Intel X38, DDR2 SDRAM).
• Memory: 2GB DDR2-1066 with 5-5-5-15 timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.

I would like to specifically stress that the Asus P5E mainboard with BIOS version 0502 we used to test Wolfdale processors does support them properly and allows adjusting their clock frequency multiplier with 0.5x increment.