New Core 2 Duo Wolfdale revision (E0) looking good.
Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:31 am
XBitlabs reviewed the E8600 last month and it bodes well for the new E0 stepping. They managed 3.9GHz at the stock voltage of 1.2V and the power consumption when over-clocked was also reduced compared to the previous revision. The E8600 (3.33GHz) is seemingly currently the only CPU using this revision but the cheaper E8500 & E8400 will also use it in the future.
Being able to hit 3.9GHz at stock voltage means you can still use Speedstep which will still allow a fairly low idle power draw by Core 2 Duo standards whilst still giving very high dual-core performance.
As a comparison the low end 65nm C2D CPUs (2MB cache) would often top out at ~2.8GHz at stock voltage so these chips manage a much higher clock speed without a voltage increase and you get the benefit of 6MB cache and SSE 4.1.
They seem a good compromise for people looking for top end performance without ignoring green issues, provided you can face the high price.
Being able to hit 3.9GHz at stock voltage means you can still use Speedstep which will still allow a fairly low idle power draw by Core 2 Duo standards whilst still giving very high dual-core performance.
As a comparison the low end 65nm C2D CPUs (2MB cache) would often top out at ~2.8GHz at stock voltage so these chips manage a much higher clock speed without a voltage increase and you get the benefit of 6MB cache and SSE 4.1.
They seem a good compromise for people looking for top end performance without ignoring green issues, provided you can face the high price.