AMD Athlon X2 7850 vs. Intel Pentium E5300: Choosing the Best $70 CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 28, 2009 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
$74 Gets You Faster than any Pentium 4 Ever Made
The Pentium E5300 is very similar in clock speed and cache size to some of the original Core 2 Duos that launched in the summer of 2006. You may recall that Intel offered both 2MB and 4MB L2 variants of the Core 2 at launch. The E6300 and E6400 both had a 2MB L2, while the E6600, E6700 and X6800 all had a 4MB L2.
The Pentium E5300 is based on the Wolfdale core, which is faster than the original Conroe based Core 2s - but it only has a 2MB L2 like the old E6400. The E6400 however ran at 2.16GHz, the E5300 runs at 2.60GHz. In other words, today’s $74 Pentium E5300 is faster than the original Core 2 Duo E6400.
But the comparison gets even more interesting. Remember that the E6400, at launch, was faster than even the fastest Pentium 4 - the dual core, four thread Pentium Extreme Edition 965 running at 3.73GHz. The charts below from my original Core 2 Duo review show just that:
Do you see where I’m going with this? While the data above is old, it shows that the E6400 was faster than the fastest Pentium 4 ever released. And the $74 E5300 is faster than the E6400, therefore the Pentium E5300 is faster than any Pentium 4 ever released.
Most people didn’t have 3.73GHz Pentium Extreme Editions in their systems - they had lower clocked versions, in which case the E5300 should be even faster. If you had a 2.8GHz Pentium D, I’d expect the Pentium E5300 to be anywhere between 20 - 40% faster regardless of application. Mmm Moore’s Law.
The Test
| Motherboard: | Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) MSI DKA790GX Platinum (AMD 790GX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X48 AMD 790GX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15) Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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evanwhat - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Please revisit this debate with overclocking factored into the picture.Many thanks,
-Evan
Patrick Wolf - Monday, May 4, 2009 - link
Why even bother with single core CPU's anymore? Why can't you throw a $50 Celeron e1400 in there? How does it compare to the lower end X2's and P4's?orenlevy - Saturday, May 2, 2009 - link
It seems you are benching the wrong hardware! You are far from the market guys.... the whole story is changing when comparing low end mobos. like G31or n73 for Intel. And 740V\g or 780G for AMD. It change totally the latency timing specially in Intel setup-there is no on die controller.agawtrip - Friday, May 1, 2009 - link
people who buy these CPUs are those on a budget.you only have two setups here - budget setups
intel e5200/e5300 + 9300/9400 boards
AMD x27750/7850 + 780G
now which is faster and has a lower price?
9300/9400 boards are faster than 780g but on a higher price. then if you're really on a budget you'll have to go for AMD set-up. if you still have some extra cash, you can put it on a video card, or extra memory or go for tri-core which will give a real nice performance, faster than OCed e5200/e5300.
dingetje - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
sorry to say this, but leaving overclocking out of the equation means: FAILbigsnyder - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
The article keeps referencing the e6400 as a comparison, but I don't see it in the charts from the original core 2 duo review. Am I missing something here?v12v12 - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
I don't wanna toot a moral high-horse, but... I noticed the word "crippled" in the article; why on earth (aside from being cheap or broke and needing a better job) would you waste money on a crippled piece of hard ware.Let me break this down: So a manufacturer produces a product X with 4 cores or whatever. Now they say "hey we've created this product and want a certain amount of compensation." So, the cost of production, advertising blah blah is all factored into this selling price. 4 cores yadda yadda...
Now some really smart mofo says "hey we can sell the same exact product from the same fab line, but we'll just 'disable' the other cores and rebadge it as a lower model, even though it costs us little to nothing to do this since it's all the same hardware!!!" Sweet deal for AMD/Intel etc.
Can you see where this is going? I would never buy something that someone purposefully disabled cores that are on the chip, that could be active and working perfectly, but they've decided to be greedy (not necessarily bad) and disable them unless you pay another higher fee. So all someone (them) has to do is flip a switch or connect some traces and boom you have the true product as intended. So in essence, it costs them little to nothing to cripple this thing, yet charge a bit less for another “product,” which in reality is NOT another product, it's the same dang thing but crippled.
Smart business practice yes... good for the consumer's wallet? No. Profits Vs Consumers. Often times consumers (cattle) find themselves rationalizing or justifying these shady profit-practices, BUT ask yourselves; would they or do they have much concern for your wallet... Yes they do, they are concerned with getting as much money from you as they can regardless of performance or not. 2 active cores or 4... they don't care so long as you're paying as much as they can get.. It costs them X to make this CPU, and they want to find a reasonable profit margin Vs costs of production, but yet they can still sell you the SAME hardware, just switched off at a MUCH lower price??? WOW these guys are deviously intelligent. Can’t say the same about many of their customers…
:-/
chowmanga - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
You're missing the point of disabling cores and selling them for cheaper price. Silicone yields aren't 100%. A lot of times these cpu's come out with defected so rather than scrapping the whole thing, they rebadge it them and sell them for cheap. They aren't necessarily "active and working perfectly"kopilka - Saturday, January 16, 2010 - link
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Doc01 - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
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