E8200 vs E7300 ...The mini showdown

Hi fellas,as for today I will be doing previews of two Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (Wolfdale) which is two of the 45nm based processor from Intel.The first processor would be Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 and the other is the Intel Core 2 Duo E8200.These two processor are each built to fit certain market targets as the E7xxx series fits perfectly for the budget minded users while the E8xxx series processor is for the entry/mid level enthusiast class of the Core 2 Duo line of processor.Without wasting further time lets see what differentiates these two processors :

~ Processor 1 ~

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 (Revision : M0)
Stock speed :2.66 GHz
Stock FSB : 1066MHz
Stock bus speed : 266 Mhz
Multiplier : 10x
L2 Cache : 3MB
Current retail price : MYR(RM) 395.00

~ Processor 2 ~

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (Revision : C0)
Stock speed :2.66 GHz
Stock FSB : 1333MHz
Stock bus speed : 333 Mhz
Multiplier : 8x
L2 Cache : 6MB
Current retail price : MYR(RM) 550.00

As can be seen from the above basic comparison,roughly it can be said that the E8200 is much superior in terms of stock FSB which is 1333MHz which can be easily bumped to a whopping 2GHz and the L2 Cache doubles the E7300 which may tell why the difference is price is MYR(RM)155.00 because adding L2 cache is costly but the big questio mark would be,will it translate into sheer power that enthusiast are looking for? Lets find out :

~ Test Bed ~

So the test bed this time would be :

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E7300/E8200
Motherboard : Gigabyte EP45-UD3R
RAM : 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 @ 5-5-5-18
Hard Drive : Seagate Barracuda 250GB
Power Supply Unit : Cooler Master Real Power Pro 450W
Cooler : Gigabyte G-Power Pro Cooler
Graphics Card : HIS HD4670 IceQ 128bit 512MB DDR3


Stock E8200 VS Stock E7300

~ Stock E7300 ~










3DMark06 Overall Score : 7578
3dMark06 CPU Score : 2377
Geekbench Score : 3066
Min/Max Temperature (Celcius) : (27c / 44c)

~ Stock E8200 ~










3DMark06 Overall Score : 7612
3dMark06 CPU Score : 2410
Geekbench Score : 3110
Min/Max Temperature (Celcius) : (37c / 50c)


Verdict : As can be seen through the benchmark done,the E8200 beats the E7300 by just a mere 34 points in overall 3DMark06 score which can be easily said as an ignored margin.And through Geekbench,we can see also that the margin is a mere 44 point,And at stock speed,it can be said that the E7300 gets my recommendation (based on stock speeds) for people out there to buy not just because its RM150.00 more cheaper than the E8200 but in terms of performance also,we can easily ignore the mere double figure margin =).However,in terms of overclock ability,this would be a different different.Lets check it out


Overclocked E8200 VS Overclocked E7300

~ Overclocked E7300 ~










Overclocked Speed : 3800 MHz (380MHz x 10)
Overclocked FSB : 1600MHz
Vcore : 1.4v
Min/Max Temperature (Celcius) : ( 27c / 61c )

3DMark06 Overall Score : 8045 (Stock : 7578) ~ improve 6.1 %
3dMark06 CPU Score : 3335 (Stock : 2377) ~ improve 40.3 %
Geekbench Score : 4170 (Stock : 3066 ) ~ improve 36 %

~ Overclocked E8200 ~










Overclocked Speed : 4000 MHz (500MHz x 8)
Overclocked FSB : 2000MHz
Vcore : 1.41v
Min/Max Temperature (Celcius) : ( 42c / 65c )

3DMark06 Overall Score : 8168 (Stock : 7612) ~ improve 7.3 %
3dMark06 CPU Score : 3607 (Stock : 2410) ~ improve 49.6 %
Geekbench Score : 4442 (Stock : 3110 ) ~ improve 42.8 %


Verdict : As can be seen from here and as has been expected,the E8200 can easily be bumped to 4 GHz (500MHz x 8) at 2GHz FSB.At this point, I beleive that the E8200 can go way further than the 4 GHz by using a much better cooling solution such as water cooling kit.

Based on the geekbench scores,it beats the 3.8 GHz E7300 by a significant 272 point margin.The reason I can't increase the E7300 speed to 4 GHz as well to make it an even 4GHz clock battle is because the system just wont load at 4 GHz (400MHz x 10),and at 3.9 GHz the system crashed during MS Vista bootup,thus that undermines the limitation of the E7300 which can't run at stable 4 GHz even at loose DRAM timings 6-6-6-21.And at an overclocking level, I can say that the E8200 is a much potent overclocker which promises high speeds and much higher performance if compared to the E7300.

~ FINAL SAY ~

Well the question now would be,should I go for E7300 or E8200 ?Well I say this :

If you do not know how to overclock and do not want to,so go for : Intel Core 2 Duo E7300
If you are an overclocker and lust for speed,so go for : Intel Core 2 Duo E8200




~~~~~~~~ = ) THANK YOU = ) ~~~~~~~~~