The Intel Core2Duo E8600 costs around 235 Euros as found at several online stores.

Taking a quick look at the included cpu cooler, we can see that its much smaller than what we have seen with 65nm Intel C2D processors.

- Installation

There isn't much to tell here but as always, be careful when installing the CPU! After connecting all the nessecery power cables, you can power up your system.

Using the latest CPU-Z we can see more details about the installed processor. The CPU multiplier is highly configurable (6~10x ) allowing us to feel that this processor would have wide overclocking margins.

The default core voltage is around 1.224V and the idle temperatures are really low.

Idle mode:

Full load:

It seems to be a difference of 5 degrees Celcius between the measurements reported by the RealTemp and the CoreTemp applications. Most people tend to agree that RealTemp is better but anyway you can use both.

For our tests we used an Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard with OCZ DDR2-1150 SLI certified memory installed. Note that the tests with other processors inlcuded in the following comparison charts were done using a a different motherboard/memory so there might be some minimal differences in raw numbers.

The Asus P5Q Deluxe is also based on the 45nm technology also so it is expected to match well with the E8600 series.

Below is the used testbed configuration

• CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen
• Motherboard: Asus P5Q Deluxe BIOS 0901 beta
• Memory: 2x1GB OCZ DDR2-1066 (1067 @ 5-5-5-15-2T, 2.20V)
• VGA: MSI 7600GT Silent with latest Nvidia drivers installed
• HDD: WD 80GB SATAI (primary)
• HDD: WD 80GB SATAI (secondary)
• Operating system: Windows XP SP2 with all latest updates installed
• Operating system: Windows VISTA 32bit SP1 with all latest updates installed

We used a variety of benchmark software to measure the performance of the processor with the two testing platforms

- Office/Benchmarks (WinXP)

• Sisoft Sandra 2008 SP2
• Everest Lavasys Ultimated Edition 2007 v4.50
• SuperPI Mod v1.5XS
• wPrime v1.55 (stable)
• Cinebench vR10
• x264 Benchmark
• x264 HD Benchmark
• SysMark 2007 Preview
• TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress

- Gaming/Benchmarks (VISTA 32bit)

• PC Mark Vantage v1.00 Nov Edition
• 3D Mark06 v1.2.0
• Crysis Retail v1.20
• Unreal Tournament 3 Demo