It has been surprising and frankly somewhat satisfying to see the success to date of the "Wolfdale" core architecture in Intel’s Core 2 lineup of processors. "Wolfdale" is Intel’s first 45nm based dual-core design, and is an interesting product beyond first glance. When it was first announced, there was a bit of doubt throughout the industry of the chip’s viability in the market. The doubt was that it would be foolish of Intel put major weight behind a dual-core processor architecture, as the future is clearly quad-core processors and beyond. More cores are always better, right? Why would Intel continue pushing dual-core models when quad-core models are getting more and more cost efficient? That's a fair question.
Once we got our first “Wolfdale” chips in for testing, we realized that a modern dual-core processor can still bring exceptional performance for today’s high-end machines. While quad-cores definitely have more appeal for the heavy multi-tasking power user, dual-cores can typically accomplish most tasks with performance to spare, but can do so with much lower power consumption and heat production. In addition, if your application of choice is only coded to handle two processor cores, it can actually run faster on a highly-clocked dual-core compared to a mid-range clocked quad-core. While the wave of multi-core software is rising every day, we still haven’t seen truly compelling numbers in main stream applications showing that quad-core processors are worth their premiums for many average, everyday computing scenarios.
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Intel's Core 2 Duo E7200 Processor Engineering Sample
The Core 2 Duo E7200 is a bit of an anomaly on Intel’s dual-core product lineup, much like the Core 2 Quad Q9300 is the anomaly for the quad-core product lineup. Both the E7200 and Q9300 are the only models in their lineups which have half the L2 cache of other models in their families. In addition, both run at 2.5 GHz clock speeds and both are priced very competitively for the performance they offer. The E7200 is a based on a simple, modern dual-core design, whereas the Q9300 uses two of these processor dies to create a quad-core version . Beyond the raw core count, the chips are nearly identical. With the release of the Core 2 Duo E7200, it’s now possible to get a fast “Wolfdale” dual-core chip for about $130, about half the price of today’s high-end “Wolfdale” models. Let’s see if this newbie can live up to the high-bar set by preceding 45nm dual-core parts from Intel.
Specifications
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;) Core 2 Duo E7200 - Top | ;) Core 2 Duo E7200 - Bottom |
The Core 2 Duo E7200 is the slowest speed 45nm dual-core processor released to date at 2.53 GHz stock speed, the next closest offering being the Intel Core 2 E8200 model, which runs at a slightly higher clocked 2.66GHz with a full 6MB of cache. The E7200 processor runs at 5% slower clock speed and has half the cache at 3 MB, but also costs 30% less overall, and is currently selling for around $130, which would be considered high-end Celeron territory previously.
The Wolfdale architecture is based on Intel’s latest 45nm manufacturing process, which means the chip runs cool and doesn’t consume a lot of power, even under heavy loads. Intel rates the Core 2 Duo E7200 with a TDP of 65W, although we feel that even this is somewhat conservative, as the chip ran close to room temperature with very low noise cooling.
Each of the two processor cores have an individual 64k of L1 cache and they share a pool of 3 MB L2 cache. 3 MB is the smallest amount of cache offered in an Intel 45nm product to date, and this is essentially why many enthusiasts will stay away from this processor. At the same clock speed, we can expect a Wolfdale with a full 6MB of cache to perform 5-10% better under intensive applications (such as gaming). However, 3 MB of cache is still plenty big for many work loads, and as you’ll see in our following benchmarks, the chip still performs within pretty similar levels of the other Wolfdale chips (with larger caches) we’ve seen to date in most scenarios. The positive side of having less cache means that the chip is physically less complex, and in addition to the power and heat benefits that come along with that, it also means that the chips are extremely good overclockers, as we’ll look into later.
In addition to having a smaller amount of cache, the E7200 also runs down a notch on its frontside bus speed from the standard 1333 MHz on other current Core 2 Duo chips to a modest 1066 MHz front side bus speed. Don't be too concerned about this, as Core 2 Duo dual-core chips rarely have the opportunity to saturate the front side bus, and you can easily shoot it back up to 1333 MHz if you so choose (and frankly, we would recommend so). It’s still a very modern processor architecture, with support for 64-bit processing, SSE4, top-notch power management and Execute Disable support. However, we should note that the E7200 does not have support for hardware virtualization acceleration and does not support Intel’s TXT (Trusted Execution Technology), which ties in with their enterprise level security efforts. As this chip is targeted for consumer applications, this isn’t all that surprising. Although it’s disappointing to see, as these chips will undoubtedly make their way into low-cost / low-power / low-heat dual-core servers as well.
In order to run the new Core 2 Duo E7200, you will need to ensure that your motherboard and BIOS revision support Intel’s 45nm processors, as a BIOS update is needed for most systems that are older than six months. Most platforms in the last year will have BIOS support for this chip but we'd advise double-checking with the manufacturer. The latest round of motherboards based on a new chipset architecture like Intel's P35, X38,and X48 or NVIDIA's nForce 7x0i series should support this chip out of the box.
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