Intel Revives the E6300 CPU

Back in the summer of 2006, Intel's Core 2 Duo E6300 was one of the first CPUs in that collection to really take off.  Over the past few months, it has gradually been disappearing from the shelves to be replaced by the new E8000 line.  Now, though, a new version of the E6300 is back as a dual-core Pentium processor.

As well as sharing a model number, the two CPUs have a lot in common.  Both have 2 MB of L2 cache and use a 1066 MHz bus.  

There are two big changes, though.  The first is that the new Pentium version runs at 2.8 GHz, while its predecessor 'only' ever made it to 1.83 GHz.

Secondly, the redesigned E6300 has been engineered at 45 nm, rather than 65 nm.  The extra precision means that it should use less power and require less intensive cooling, despite being more powerful than the older processor.

What do we make of the new processors?

The Pentium E6300 is the first of a new line of processors.  Compared to the E5000 series, the only difference is the bus speed, with the former using an 800 MHz bus in place of the 1066 MHz bus on the new series; the size of the cache memory is the same.  This means that an E6300 should be a little faster than an E5000 running at the same clock speed.

It's the other way round when you look at the Core 2 Duo E7000 range, which uses the same 1066 MHz bus but has 3 MB of cache, rather than 2 MB.  At the same clock speed, then, an E6300 should be slightly slower than an E7000.