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Archive: Processors 2008-09 >

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200

Caractéristiques
Socket775
Number of cores2
Clock rate2.66 GHz
Cache6 MB
Thermal Design Power65 W
Show all specifications
Technology45 nm
Hide specifications
Régis Jehl
Test date: November 6, 2008
Intel's E8000 Range

The Core 2 Duo E8000 line made its debut in January 2008 with just three processors, including this E8200, which, at 2.66 GHz, is the slowest member of the family. Since then, though, the range has been extended all the way up to 3.33 GHz with the E8600.

These dual-core processors all have a 6 MB cache and fit into 775 sockets, and, like their counterparts the E7000 family (we tested the E7200 and E7300), their 45 nm engineering keeps their Thermal Design Power down to just 65 W.

This Core 2 Duo E8200 chip is the starting point for Intel's E8xxx line, which stretches up to the E8600.

While this processor has a clock speed of 2.66 GHz, making it technically around 25% less powerful than the E8600 at 3.33 GHz, in our tests, we ound the performance gap between them to be only around 15%.

Compare the Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 with the AMD Phenom X4 9750 and other CPUs in our
Product Face-Off

In 3D games, there is barely any distinction between the top and bottom of the scale with only one or two frames per second separating the two chips.

Things are a little different when compressing files, though, with the E8200 taking 3 minutes 44 seconds to compress the same files as the E8600 did in 3 minutes 6 seconds.

For complex operations like this, and others like 3D video editing and rendering, you'd be better off upgrading even further and moving to a CPU with four cores from Intel's Core 2 Quad range.

Applying a filter to our test photo in Photoshop CS3, another of our tests, took 5 minutes 5 seconds on this E8200 chip, but its clock speed equivalent, the Q9400, managed to almost halve this to 2 minutes 44 seconds.

The E8200 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.

Finally, to compare this processor with some of its competitors from Intel's great rival, AMD, it more or less matches the performance of the Phenom X4 9650, a quad-core. 
Pluses

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Speedy results on almost every test

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Sometimes as fast as entry-level quad-core processors

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Reasonable energy efficiency

Minuses

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For demanding applications, quad-core processors will do better

4
The E8000 series is an excellent bunch of dual-core processors with reasonable power consumption. For more demanding tasks, though, a quad-core CPU will do better.

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