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On July 14, 2006, Intel took the "Fastest Gaming Processor" crown away from AMD. I was just as surprised as everyone else; until I'd started testing the chip myself, I had found the leaked numbers hard to believe. But Intel pulled it off; the microarchitecture of the Core 2 Duo is so excellent that it can overcome (to a large extent) the crippling limitations placed on it by an 800MHz-1066MHz FSB.

In the months since then, Intel has introduced the XE6800,  E6600, then the 2MB cache E6400 and E6300, and most recently the quad core QX6700 and Q6600. AMD has been unable to respond yet, other than the re-labeling some high speed socket F Opteron's as "FX-74/FX-72/FX-70" procesoors, sold in pairs for their "4x4" platform.

Intel is also going for the dual core low end now, an area currently dominated by the AMD 3800 X2 and 4200 X2 processors.

The E4300 (and soon to be released E4400) are based on the new Allendale core, and as such, have 2MB of cache allowing a smaller die - which results in more chips per wafer - than the E6300 and E6400, which have half of their 4MB of L2 cache disabled.

I have great hopes for this chip, and I've been looking forward to putting it through its paces.

In order that you can see how it places "on the totem pole", I've gone overboard, and included a very large number of past results - and I ended up comparing it to the following list of dual core processors:

• Intel 805 D
• Intel 840 D
• Intel 930 D
• Intel E6300 (simulated by running the E6400 with a 7x multiplier)
• Intel E6400
• Intel E6600
• Intel E6700
• Intel QX6700

And from the competition...

• AMD AM2 X2 3800+
• AMD AM2 X2 4200+ EE
• AMD AM2 X2 5000+
• AMD AM2 FX62

As some of the older chips will have been benchmarked with older drivers, there will be a small variation in the older results due to drivers; however the differences ought to be small.

When Intel replaces the E6300 and E6400 with the upcoming E6320 and E6420, they will stop disabling half the cache on those chips, so all 6xxx series Core 2 Duo's will then have 4MB of L2 cache.

The lower end E4xxx range of processors will be distinguished from the E6xxx series of processors by only having 2MB of L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, and having VT support disabled.

Given that the E4300 has a physically smaller die, runs at a lower default Vcore and having a maximum 9x multiplier, it should be a pretty good overclocker - but exactly how good? We will see, because I'm going to take this E4300 and overclock it to its absolute limit!