Final Verdict

FiringSquad says

If you’re in the market for a new CPU but don’t have a lot of money to spend, it’s hard not to be impressed by Intel’s Core 2 Duo E4300.

On paper its specs are rather unassuming, the chip ships with just 2MB of L2 cache and runs at 1.8GHz on an 800MHz FSB – definitely nothing state-of-the-art by today’s standards – but as you saw in our benchmarks, when overclocked the Core 2 Duo E4300 becomes quite a performer, outrunning even Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800 in our tests. It’s here where the CPU really shines.

The key to the E4300’s overclocking potential is its 9.0x multiplier. As we stated earlier, 9.0x is high enough that you can hit high CPU clock speeds without having to overdo it on the FSB. This was the only real downside to Intel’s previous value offering, the Core 2 Duo E6300; the E6400 actually had better OC’ing potential thanks to its 8.0 multiplier, but it sells for well over $200.

The E4300 on the other hand has the higher multiplier, but more importantly, carries a much lower price tag. Intel lists it for $20 less than the Core 2 Duo E6300. The E4300 lacks support for virtualization, but as we explained earlier this feature is more important in the server realm than on the desktop; most users will hardly notice it’s missing. You’d be hard-pressed not to notice the performance put up by our Core 2 Duo E4300 though, especially when overclocked.

Even if you exclude overclocking, there’s a lot to like about the Core 2 Duo E4300. It outruns its nearest competitor in price, AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 4000+, all while running quite efficiently. The chip is only outfitted with 2MB L2 cache and this does hurt performance somewhat, but keep in mind that at the resolutions you’re most likely to game at, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with AA/AF turned on, the smaller cache really doesn’t have an impact, instead the GPU is much more important. And with the money you saved by going with a Core 2 Duo E4300, you can perhaps upgrade from the GeForce 7900 GS or Radeon X1650 XT you’d intended on purchasing up to a GeForce 7950 GT or Radeon X1950 Pro. This should make the CPU exciting if you’re a gamer who loves eye candy.

Intel’s push to replace their Netburst processors with Core 2 is a significant coup for gamers and hardware enthusiasts on a budget looking to upgrade. As the Core 2 Duo E4300 has just demonstrated, you can wring a lot of performance out of the CPU without shelling out a lot of money. The real beauty of it though is that as good as things are now, they’re about to get even better, with Q2’07 seeing the introduction of another Core 2 E4000 CPU, the E4400, as well as the E6420 and 6320. Not to mention the upcoming price cuts.

With all this in mind, upgrading to Core 2 has never been more affordable.