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Intel Pentium E2140 review - Core 2 for £50
Price £51.22 inc VAT
Supplier Scan
Manufacturer Intel
SKU number BX80557E2140
The Pentium is back, after a short interval when most people (including ourselves) thought that NetBurst architecture Pentium 4s and Pentium Ds had killed the brand. Clearly, Intel wasn't prepared to drop a brand in which it had been investing since 22 March, 1993. However, while Intel used to give its flagship high-end processors the Pentium treatment, the branding is being used on budget processors that would previously have been called Celerons. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
In typical fashion, our questions as to why the brand has resurfaced went unanswered by Intel. Clearly, even the formidable Intel PR machine can't cope with the amount of products it's pushing out the door these days. In fact, we wouldn't have heard of the Pentium E2140 if we hadn't been browsing the LGA775 CPU section on Scan's website. This brings us to our next point: at the time, Scan was advertising the product as a £51 Core 2 Duo E2140. However, after searching the Intel website, we found the processor was called a Pentium E2140.
So why the confusion on Scan's part? The reason for this can be easily found on Intel's website. The Pentium E2140 is 'based on a new energy-efficient microarchitecture' and has Wide Dynamic Execution (a four-instruction-wide pipeline), 'very deep out-of-order execution', a digital thermal sensor, Advanced Smart Cache and Advanced Digital Media Boost (128-bit SSE instructions). In other words, it's based on the Core architecture, not the NetBurst architecture on which Pentium 4 and Pentium D chips were based.
Granted, it's a crippled Core 2 Duo, since the shared Level 2 cache is 1MB rather than the 2MB or 4MB of Core 2 Duos. The Pentium E2140 also has a 200MHz FSB (800MHz effective), compared with the 266MHz FSB (1,066MHz effective) or 333MHz FSB (1,333MHz effective) of fully-fledged chips. Each of its two cores runs at just 1.6GHz, 200MHz slower than a Core 2 Duo E4300.
As that's less than half the frequency of previous-generation Pentiums - the Pentium 4 series was clocked up to 3.8GHz and the Pentium D series up to 3.6GHz - we wanted to find out whether the highly efficient Core architecture of the Pentium E2140 could compensate for its low frequency. The last Pentium-branded CPU worth considering was the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820, so we decided that this was the best chip with which to compare the Pentium E2140.
The Pentium E2140 was faster at stock frequencies, scoring 1.12 in our Media Benchmarks, compared with the Pentium D 820's score of 0.99. This proves once and for all that the NetBurst architecture was a load of rubbish. The Pentium E2140 chip held its own against the Pentium D in the video encoding test, which is the only saving grace of the NetBurst architecture and its unfeasibly long pipeline.
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personlaly this chip is a good starting point for someone who is new to overclock...if they break it hey was only £40. but when you look at that price and what it is capable off....now thats a whole new story, i'll admit that this was a pain to work with (although my mobo didn't help matters) i have achieved a stable o/c of 3.2ghz on air..dont belive me http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=304999 yes it only has 1mb lv2 cache and cant handle games like the newer e8xx series but well worth the money if on a budget and willing to o/c it!
Comment by Degenerate2007 at 4:07pm 29th January 2008
Left this chip @2.68ghz running orthos overnight, checked on it this morning and it was still rock solid. Was using Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro with Arctic Cooling's MX2 thermal paste...... This is a screenie of it at the beginning of testing, just to show how easily this thing clocks up: Thought it was time for a small upgrade to my aeging Pentium D 805 rig.... So I forked out on this beauty, a GA-P31-DS3L mobo and a nice Cooler Master CM 690 case, put it all together, whacked up the FSB to 335, put a few extra . volts on the vcore, and it is now churning away happily @ 2.68ghz.... Not bad for a £40 chip! (It can go higher without doubt, but I am waiting for some better RAM for this job) Just to compare (the graphics card was overclocked to the same frequency on both machines) : Pentium D 805 @ 2.66ghz 2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2 Asus P5KC motherboard Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked 3dmark03 score: approx 12,000 marks /// Pentium E2140 @ 2.68ghz 2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2 Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked 3dmark03: 17,785 marks Here is a shot of it at the beginning of stress testing, I left it running overnight and it was still rock solid stable when I turned it off this morning. http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa269/kaspersky_labs/overclock_e2140_val.jpg
Comment by MAPKOBKA at 12:06pm 3rd December 2007
Just to compare (the graphics card was overclocked to the same frequency on both machines) :
Pentium D 805 @ 2.66ghz
2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2
Asus P5KC motherboard
Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked
3dmark03 score: approx 12,000 marks ///
Pentium E2140 @ 2.68ghz
2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard
Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked
3dmark03: 17,785 marks
Here is a shot of it at the beginning of stress testing, I left it running overnight and it was still rock solid stable when I turned it off this morning.
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa269/kaspersky_labs/overclock_e2140_val.jpg &subject=Reporting comment found on Custom PC, article id: 119011){kind=link}
Thought it was time for a small upgrade to my aeging Pentium D 805 rig.... So I forked out on this beauty, a GA-P31-DS3L mobo and a nice Cooler Master CM 690 case, put it all together, whacked up the FSB to 335, put a few extra . volts on the vcore, and it is now churning away happily @ 2.68ghz.... Not bad for a £40 chip! (It can go higher without doubt, but I am waiting for some better RAM for this job) Just to compare (the graphics card was overclocked to the same frequency on both machines) : Pentium D 805 @ 2.66ghz 2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2 Asus P5KC motherboard Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked 3dmark03 score: approx 12,000 marks /// Pentium E2140 @ 2.68ghz 2GB Corsair XMS2 675Mhz DDR2 Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCIE overclocked 3dmark03: 17,785 marks
Comment by MAPKOBKA at 12:04pm 3rd December 2007
Bought one of these for the office in a complete PC from Novatech - The Isys model - for £249 excluding VAT - and am very impressed with the 'bang per buck' - so impressed, in fact, that we have already bought another one and will be getting a third next week.
Comment by johne at 9:21am 19th September 2007
asrock have overclocked this chip on their 1333 motherbored at an incredible 2.66MGz, and are selling both overclocked at this level for only £82.99..phew
Comment by ant7711 at 12:52pm 4th September 2007
I bought the last 'miracle' processor that was cheap and very powerful - 15 months ago. The Pentium D 805 - now everyone\'s slagging it off and I\'m the laughing stock of most of western europe. Do I want to get this processor ? Not if it came with Britney Spears - what\'s another
Comment by oneman at 2:39pm 13th July 2007
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