Core 2 Duo E7200 vs E6300

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

The E7x00 series is a stripped down version of the E8x00 series. Basically, one FSB strap lower and half of the L2 cache. The E8x00 series runs at 1333FSB with 6MB of L2 cache while the E7x00 series runs at 1066FSB with 3MB of L2 cache goodness.

The E7200 can be considered to be most closely related to the E8500. Both possess a 9.5 Bus to Core Ratio (commonly known as the multiplier), with the E8500 having 6MB of L2 cache and using 333FSB for a stock speed of 3.16GHz. The E7200 has 3MB of L2 cache and uses 266FSB for a stock speed of 2.53GHz.

If both were clocked to the same speed, the performance difference caused by L2 cache size would be no more than 5-10%. Synthetic benchmarks can easily show up these differences but the real world impact is not as noticeable.

Taking a look now at the E6300, we see that it has 2MB of L2 cache and also runs at 266FSB. However, this CPU has a multiplier of only 7, which leaves us with a stock speed of 1.86GHz. With a 1MB L2 cache difference between the E6300 and the E7200, we see the performance difference — in situations where L2 cache is used intensively — become only 1-3% which is even less noticeable.

Anyway, I’m sure what everyone wants to see now is the test setup and the benchmarks.  So let’s get to that.