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Intel is now gunning for the dual core low end now, an area currently dominated by the AMD 3600 X2 and 4200 X2 processors. With the excellent microarchitecture of the Core 2 Duo, Intel is betting on the E2140 and E2160 still performing better than the low end AMD parts; basically betting that the microarchitecture will overcome the crippling effect of the 800MHz FSB that the E21xx series are targeted for.

The E2160, like the previously released E4x00 series, are based on the new Allendale core, however unlike the E4x00 series which have 2MB of cache, the E2xx0 series only have 1MB of L2 cache (512KB per core). As many of you will recall, the original E6400 and E6300 were actually based on dies with 4MB of L2 cache, of which Intel disabled 2MB so that the lower cost E6400 (and E6300) would be more easily distinguished from its 4MB L2 cache E6600 and E6700 siblings; so it is not surprising that Intel has decided to simply reduce the FSB and L2 cache size of the E4xxx series to produce the E2xxx series of budget Core 2 processors.

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 E4300 (simulated by running the E4400 with an 8x multiplier)
• Intel E4400
• Intel E6300 (simulated by running the E6400 with a 7x multiplier)
• Intel E6400
• Intel E6600
• Intel E6700
• Intel E6750
• Intel QX6700

And from AMD:

• AMD AM2 X2 4200+ (which was chosen for having a very similar price point to the E2160)

As some of the 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 very small.

The E2160 runs at a lower default Vcore with a 200MHz FSB, 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 E2160 and overclock it to its absolute limit!