The intel dual core range was extended down beyond the original core2duo and branded with the well known Pentium brand name. These chips are significantly cheaper than the core2duo (c2d) chips but are just cut down versions based on the same architecture. They run at a reduced 800Mhz front side bus rather than the 1066Mhz of the original c2d and they have only 1Mb of L2 cache onboard. Needless to say these cpus have locked multipliers.

There are a range of chips available with varing default clock speeds, the E2140 runs at 1.6Ghz (200*8), the E2160 runs at 1.8Ghz (200*9) and the E2180 runs at 2Ghz (200*10). These clock speeds are quite low for a modern cpu and although plenty fast enough for an office PC they could appreciate a little overclocking boost if used for gaming or cpu intensive applications like video editing or encoding.

It is the cheap price and overclocking potential that make these cpus attractive and at the time of writing the E2160 is the most attractive being available for little more than the E2140 but a decent few pounds less than the E2180. If you’re thinking of buying one check the prices on the whole range and get the one with the best price not necessarily the cheapest price, look to spend between £40 and £45 maximum.

The retail version will come in a nice intel box and will have a standard intel cooler included whereas the OEM version will arrive as just a cpu in a small brown box or plastic bag. The retail version is worth having for a couple of pounds extra unless you already have a spare 775 socket cooler. With the retail cooler impressive overclocks are still possible.

I bought two of these cpus (both E2160s), one for a uATX small form factor PC and one for my main desktop PC. One was OEM and the other was retail boxed. I tried the standard cooler on the retail boxed cpu and then replaced the cooler for an Akasa Evo120. The OEM chip has always been cooled by a Zalman CNPS7700.

Not much to say about the packaging or chips themselves, they are much like any other cpu really. You get an Intel sticker to proudly display on your PC case, if you’re into that sort of thing and you get an instruction manual and a lot of information on warranty. If you buy the retail version then the cooler is of the PWM type which allows it’s speed to be controlled by the motherboard and it comes with some thermal paste pre-applied. The standard cooler is quite noisy at full speed (~2000rpm) but as it’s a PWM fan and the chips run cool at default voltage, it is fairly quiet, especially at idle or low load. It’s only at the raised voltages needed for high overclocks and under large loads that the cooler will start to become annoyingly loud.

As the fsb runs at a default speed of 800Mhz, the maximum your motherboard BIOS will allow you to set the memory at will also be 800Mhz, so if you’re not overclocking there’s no point in buying memory capable of 1066, 1333 or higher. If you are planning on overclocking then you might want to pair it up with faster memory because you’ll be increasing the fsb to get the clock speed up.

So, exactly how well does it overclock? How does 80-90% sound to you? I paired my second E2160 with an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard and 2Gb of OCZ DDR3 1066Mhz RAM, the motherboard is overkill for an E2160 and cost 3x the price of the CPU but I wanted a motherboard that would last me and be suitable for an upgrade to a quad core later. A P31/P35 chipset based motherboard should be plenty good enough for a similar overclock with an E2160. My other E2160 is in an Abit F-I90HD uATX motherboard with 2Gb of OCZ DDR2 800Mhz RAM.

In the ASUS setup I’ve been able to overclock the E2160 to 3.30Ghz and have it remain stable overnight running Orthos stress test. This is my maximum stable overclock as any additional voltage causes throttling due to excessive temperature and raising the speed further without raising the voltage makes it unstable. However in a water or phasechange cooled system it could no doubt be pushed further, you’d have to question the wisdom of spending such large amounts of money cooling such a low end CPU though!

With the standard cooler 3Ghz is quite easily achievable as this does not require much additional voltage and the temperatures will remain fairly low. Don’t be afraid of high stress test temperatures, the CPU will throttle back if things get too toasty rather than burning out. Mine will go over 80C before throttling and as you’re not going to be running stress tests for the life of the CPU these temperatures will be rarely reached.

My second E2160 in the Abit uATX motherboard has managed top reach 2.9Ghz which again is quite impressive considering it’s a uATX motherboard in a SFF case.

How about performance then? Well, at 3.3Ghz 1M SuperPI can be run in 18secs which is good considering that my old 939 socket opteron 146 would only make 30secs when overclocked to 3Ghz.

For full benchmarking results including graphs check out my ‘Max OC versus Stock’ article.

Pros:
Excellent price
Extremely overclockable, even with stock cooler
Decent stock performance for everyday PC tasks
Fantastic performance to price ratio when overclocked
Dual Core

Cons:
Quickly gets very hot at increased voltage
Poorer L2 cache size

8/10

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