Testbed and Methods

The main opponent to Core 2 Duo E7200 should probably be the Core 2 Duo E4700 processor available at the same price point. However, comparing the performance of only these two solutions will hardly be enough to give you a complete picture of what the new CPU is actually capable of. Therefore, we have also included the results for the youngest representatives of the Core 2 Duo E8000 and E6000 processor families. Besides, we couldn’t disregard the competitors from AMD, as they can currently offer their Athlon 64 X2 6000+ in the same price range after the latest price-list refresh.

As a result, the complete systems configuration included the following hardware components:

• CPUs:
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2 x 1MB L2, Windsor);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 (LGA775, 2.53GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 3MB L2, Wolfdale);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 (LGA775, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 (LGA775, 2.6GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2, Allendale).
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS P5K3 Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR3 SDRAM);
  • ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI).
• Memory:
  • 2GB DDR2-800 SDRAM with 4-4-4-12 timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF);
  • 2GB DDR3-1333 SDRAM with 6-6-6-18 timings(Cell Shock DDR3-1800).
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.

Note that during the tests of Core 2 Duo E7200 processor supporting FSB 266MHz, we had to switch the memory to DDR3-1066 mode with 5-4-4-15 timings, because contemporary chipsets did not support higher memory frequency dividers. Also during Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 tests the memory worked as DDR3-800 with 5-3-3-12 timings.