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.