The Core 2 Duo E8600 from Intel is at the top of the manufacturer's range of E8xxx processors and flies along at 3.33 GHz.

This speed theoretically puts it ahead of the E7200 which runs at 2.53 GHz by around 30%, and our tests confirmed this result.


To give an example of just one task where the extra power counted in this chip's favor, encoding DivX video took just 5 minutes 38 seconds in place of 7 minues 43 seconds on the E7200.

Nevertheless, for such intensive work, a quad-core processor will ofen deliver more effective results: the Core 2 Quad Q9650, for instance, encoded the same data in 4 minutes 23 seconds.

Like the rest of the range, the E8700 is fairly reasonable in its power consumption given how much performance it delivers, but it's a long way from being an energy efficient processor.

Up against Intel's great rival AMD, the Phenom X4 9750, a quad-core processor, comes close to the E8300 on certain tests, but their respective performances are too close to give a definitive answer about which one is better.