Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 with Intels New Micro Architecture - "Allendale"

11/01/07

The CES has proved to be more exciting than usual and as expected, Steve Jobs stole the show with his iPhone keynote speech. Intel on the other hand has started to release it Quad Core Processors.
Along with the new powerful quad core processors, Intel is also trying to get the Core 2 CPU's in to the low end CPU market (where until now Intel has been very successful with the Celron CPUs). Hence the E400 series and the new micro architecture - Allendale.
The Allendale micro architecture is based on the Conroe micro architecture found in all the Core 2 Duo processors. It differs in that the Conroe processors have been designed with 4MB of cache. Intel has disconnected 2 MB of cache on the cheaper processors the E6300 and E6400, but the physical cache is still there. On the E4000 series and the Allendale micro-architecture there is only 2 MB of cache to begin with. This saved Intel a couple of million transistors, thus reducing the cost of production which means that we get cheaper processors.
The E4300 is priced at $163 and Intel plans to make the CPU even more affordable in Q2 by reducing the price to $113.
So what are we getting for our money? The Core2Duo E4300 has an 800 MHz FSB, which is great news for overclocking since its frequency is 200 MHz (compared to the 266 MHz frequency in the E6000 series which made overclocking a bit harder). On the other hand it does not support Intel's Virtualization Technology. It comes with a clock speed of 1.8 GHz but as mentioned can very easily be overclocked.

The ultimate question is – how well does this Intel's Junior CPU the Core 2 Duo E4300 perform. From the benchmarks, one thing is clear - the E4300 Core 2 Duo is one impressive overclockable CPU.
Or as the testers put it:

“Every generation a ridiculously overclockable bargain chip is born, and the Core 2 Duo E4300 is just that chip.”

“The Core 2 Duo E4300 is also a gift for overclockers since it doesn't require special overclocker-friendly components and has an affordable price. But to all appearances, Allendale-based CPUs won't reach as high frequencies at overclocking as Conroe-based CPUs do.”

As far as general performance goes:

“The best part of it all is that the E4300 is a no-compromise core; you end up losing VT support, but all of the performance elements are there. The 800MHz FSB isn't crippling enough to really hinder performance, and the smaller cache is more than acceptable for the vast majority of applications. The Core 2 Duo E4300 is no Celeron; if anything it's a spiritual successor to a long line of attractive, highly overclockable Intel CPUs. It's everything Intel's Pentium D 820 was, but with much higher performance and a much lower power envelope.”

“Performance of the Core 2 Duo E4300 isn't that impressive as that of the senior models of the series. Although it differs by only 3-5% from the Core 2 Duo E6300, rarely the new CPU is slower than the Pentium D 945 and Athlon 64 X2 4200+, which cost about the same money, in some benchmarks. But there are few such benchmarks and the new CPU is far more economical than any of its opponents.”