Introduction

After AMD launched its reincarnated Athlon II series of processors, Intel needed to find a quick fix to maintain lower end segment performance leadership, until new generation of LGA 1156 Pentiums and Core i3 processors are ready for the market. While the old Pentium E5x00 models are still good enough to compete with dual core Athlon II X2 models, there was a large price and performance gap between those and higher end Core 2 Duos, a gap that came under heavy attack when AMD launched triple core Athlon II X3 and quad core Athlon II X4 processors.

Intel's Pentium E6x00 family is higher a clocked Pentium with more FSB bandwidth. Based on the Wolfdale 2M core, these dual core processors have a difficult task ahead - fight off AMD's cheap and effective Athlon II processors.

I would like to thank Links for providing the processor sample for this review.

Packaging and Contents

The Pentium E6300 comes in a retail package that includes a short installation manual, Intel Pentium case-badge, Intel-certified aluminum heatsink, and of course the processor itself. Intel offers a 3-year warranty for all retail processors, including this one.

Pentium E6300

The new Pentium E6300 is based on a 45 nm Wolfdale 2M core, which is derivate of the Wolfdale core with 6 MB of L2 cache. Cache reduction to 2 MB of total L2 cache resulted in a processor that has a die size of only 82 mm². While carrying the same family name, Pentium E6300 models have little in common with the older Core 2 Duo E6x00 series which were based on Conroe 65 nm cores.

Pentiums E6x00 are here to replace the soon to be EOL-ed E5x00 family, and except for higher clocks E6x00 models don't bring anything new to the market. Both cores on E6300 run at 2.80 GHz while the FSB speed has been increased from 800 MHz to 1066 MHz. This translates to DDR2 or DDR3 1066 MHz support, higher bandwidth and small performance increases per clock over E5x00 the Pentium family. With Pentium E6x00, Intel's Virtualization Technology is finally available on lower end models, and other than that there are no more differences between Pentium E6x00 and E5x00 processors.
Pentium's E6300 operational voltage ranges from 0.85 V to 1.3625 V, and on our tested sample it was set to 1.275 V. Maximum power consumption or TDP is rated at 65 W.

Pentium E6300 is based on Intel's "older" architecture and is LGA775 compatible, its memory controller is located in the motherboard Northbridge chipset which is connected to the processor via FSB bus communication, so you can expect lower memory performance and bigger latencies with these models. FSB bus support also determines maximum supported memory speed, and with 1066 MHz FSB bus on Pentium E6300 it supports DDR2 or DDR3 memory up to 1066 MHz. Memory type is dependant on the motherboard chipset and choice of memory type. Comparing it to newer generations of AMD or Intel processors, E6300 is really simple in its inner workings making it very overclocking friendly .



Although Pentium E6300 is simpler in design compared to its main competitor, Athlon II, it is still faster clock per clock, so a stock frequency of 2.80 GHz makes it noticeably faster than dual core Athlon II X2 and almost on par with Phenom II X2 processors. But the problem is when you compare the prices of Pentium E6300 with AMD's lineup. Intel is confident that E6300's two faster cores are more than enough to combat AMD's triple core Athlon II X3 425, hence the similar price tag. Pentium E6300 is also much more expensive than Athlon II X2 240, so it will have to offer some impressive numbers to justify its heavier price tag.

Specifications

In the table below you can review detailed specifications of Pentium E6300 and other models that will show up later in the performance graphs. AMD's competition in this market segment comes in form of the Athlon II X3 425 which has one extra core compared to Pentium E6300.