Testbed and Methods

We decided to compare the performance of the new Core 2 Duo E6850, E6750 and E6550 processors against that of the current top Core 2 Duo CPUs. We have also included the results for AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, although it could actually compete only against Core 2 Duo E6600 and Core 2 Duo E6550.

Altogether our test platforms were built with the following hardware components:

• CPUs
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (LGA775, 2.93GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (LGA775, 2.4GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 (LGA775, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe).
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI);
  • ASUS P5K Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35).
• Memory: 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12);
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• PSU: SilverStone SST-ST85ZF (850 W).
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x86.

We ran the tests with the mainboards BIOS Setup adjusted for maximum performance.