Intel Core 2 Duo E6850

Verdict: The Core 2 Duo-series hits 3GHz at a surprisingly low price

The Core 2 Duo E6850 is the second dual-core CPU Intel is launching this month. While the new E6750, reviewed here, is a direct replacement for the existing E6700, since both chips run at the same frequency, the E6850 introduces a whole new speed grade: 3GHz. However, the E6850 isn’t the first Core architecture CPU to hit 3GHz; that honour goes to the Xeon E5160.

Like the E6750, the E6850 has a 333MHz FSB (1,333MHz effective), so theoretically, it has more memory bandwidth than its 266MHz FSB (1,066MHz effective) forebears. As with other chips based on the Conroe core, the E6850 has 4MB of shared Level 2 cache. While the increased FSB has minimal effects on overall performance, thanks to its higher frequency, the E6850 proved to be the fastest non-Extreme-branded CPU we’ve tested, breaking the ‘2.0 barrier’ at stock speeds.

Unfortunately, as our sample E6850 had a VID of 1.35V, it ran hotter than our E6750 sample, which had a VID of 1.3V, and was also more reluctant to overclock. We managed to push it to only 3.6GHz (with a 400MHz FSB) on air cooling. At these settings, it obviously wasn’t going to perform as well as the E6750 (and its overclocked maximum of 3.66GHz), but it was still very fast, posting a score of 2.38.

CONCLUSION

While our sample E6850 wouldn’t overclock as far as our E6750 sample, we’re confident it could be pushed much higher with water cooling. At stock speeds, this CPU proved to be the fastest non-Extreme-branded chip we’ve seen so far and, if you can get hold of one with a VID of 1.3V, you should be able to push it to around 4GHz. Given that it costs only £168, it’s a great purchase.

Test kit: Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP, 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S
hard disk, 2GB of A-Data DDR3, GeForce 7900 GTX, Windows XP SP2

Dell Precision T3400 Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GH

Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GHz, 2048 MB, 250 GB

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