Intel Core 2 Duo E7200: The new budget king

Mid-way through 2006 we saw the launch of Intel’s most impressive processor series in recent times, the Core 2 Duo. At the time the flagship model was the E6700, featuring a 2.66GHz clock frequency, 4MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB, and a 65nm design process, all of which was topped off with a price tag of $530. Today we are looking at a processor with similar specifications with one major difference, that being the estimated retail price of just $133.

The new Core 2 Duo E7200 is the first member of the “Wolfdale-3M” family. You may remember that not so long ago we looked at the new Wolfdale family of 45nm processors, which consists of the E8200, E8300, E8400 and E8500 processors. These still remain today as the fastest Core 2 Duo processors, offering superior performance and efficiency not to mention stellar overclocking abilities.

The Wolfdale-3M family is, as you may have guessed, a cut-down version, and as the name alludes to, these processors feature a smaller 3MB L2 cache and a 1066MHz FSB. With the Core 2 Duo E7200, Intel is offering a 45nm processor that is considerably more affordable than the cheapest Wolfdale (~$180), and even undercuts other budget oriented models such as the E6550 that roughly costs $160, while the E4700 is also more expensive at around $140.

The Core 2 Duo E7200 operates at 2.53GHz, making it slightly slower than the E4700, though it will make up for this with a greater FSB speed and extra L2 cache. More importantly as a 45nm chip it inherits the added efficiency the original Wolfdale CPUs are known for.

The Core 2 Duo E7200 is already available at $133, so there is no question regarding the legitimacy of its suggested retail price as there was with the E8400.

Then the only big question left to answer now is how does this 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo chip with 3MB of L2 cache perform? This and more will be answered very shortly, as we will throw the usual batch of tests at the E7200 and compare it to a range of Intel and AMD processors.

Benchmarks: Specs & 3Dmark Vantage
Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53GHz) LGA775
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz) LGA775
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz) LGA775
- AMD Phenom X4 9850 (2.50GHz) AM2+
- AMD Phenom X4 9750 (2.40GHz) AM2+
- AMD Phenom X4 9650 (2.30GHz) AM2+
- AMD Phenom X3 8750 (2.40GHz) AM2+
- AMD Phenom X3 8650 (2.30GHz) AM2+
- AMD Phenom X3 8450 (2.10GHz) AM2+
- x2 1024MB Corsair XMS PC3-10600 CAS7 Modules
- x2 1024MB Corsair XMS PC2-6400 CAS4 Modules
- ASUS Crosshair II Formula (Nvidia nForce 780a SLI)
- ASUS P5E3 Premium (Intel X48)
- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)
- Seagate 500GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)
- ASUS GeForce 9800 GX2 (1GB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware (174.74)
- ATI Catalyst 8.5
- Intel System Drivers (8.4.0)
- Nvidia nForce 18.11

Our first batch of results has been recorded using 3Dmark Vantage as we look at the CPU and GPU scores.

Regardless of the processor the Asus GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card produces roughly the same result in 3Dmark Vantage. The CPU scores, however, were quite different with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 delivering the best result. In the grand scheme of things, the Core 2 Duo E7200 does quite poorly here, producing the lowest score of the 9 processors tested. That said, the E7200 is just one of two dual-core processors tested, the other being the 3.0GHz E8400 (mind the triple-core Phenoms).