Which CPU is BETTER overall? e6300 Conroe or e5200 Wolfdale?

[ibex333]

I recently bought an e5200 for my father's PC, but then I figured it's faster when Oc'd than my old e6300, so I swapped CPUs with him. After doing some googling, I'm not so sure I made a good decision anymore...

Can someone please explain this to me? Why is it that e6300 is called core 2 duo, while the e5200 is called "Pentium". ? I thought Pentiums were an "older" line?


I can see that the e6300 has "virtualization support" while the 5200 doesn't. What is this "virtualization" for?

Which CPU is better at stock? and when OC'd? Let's say we have both of them running at 3.2 or 3.6GHZ... Which one is faster?

I heard that the e5200 can easily get to 4.0GHz with proper cooling, but this cant possibly be the case with e6300 unless watercooled...

Thanx very much.

 

[JMapleton]

I do think the e5200 would be superior.

 

[techmanc]

Overclocking is highly overrated IMHO its subjected have the all the right overclocking parts which can vary by pieces or batches. I would also choose the e5200

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: techmanc
Overclocking is highly overrated IMHO its subjected have the all the right overclocking parts which can vary by pieces or batches. I would also choose the e5200

This.

Generalizing a CPU by saying a large overclock is "easy" or "guaranteed" is just foolish, IMO. There are just too many variables.

 

[dguy6789]

The E5200 should overclock much further than the E6300 if the rest of the parts are the same.

 

[ibex333]

Thanx for the replies. What about "virtualization" technology? What is this for?

 

[dguy6789]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

Bottom line: If you don't know what it is, you don't need it.

 

[kmmatney]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Thanx for the replies. What about "virtualization" technology? What is this for?

Virtualization is for better performance when running virtual machines (VMWare, VirtualPC 2007, etc...). At least that is one major use for it. At stock speed, I would guess that the E5200 would be faster, since its default clock speed is much higher (2.5 Ghz versus 1.8 Ghz). If they were overclocked to the same speed, they will be about the same (they have the same cache). The E5200 should run cooler though. I would take the E5200 over the E6300 (although the E6300 isn'f bad, and can overlock to 3.0 Ghz).

The E6300 will come with a better heatsink, I would imagine, as the E5200 retail heatsink is tiny.

 

[ibex333]

So if a CPU does not have virtualization technology, how much worse will it perform when running VMWAre than a CPU that does support it?

I see no mention of this in the wiki article...

 

[PCTC2]

Intel VT on the CPU allows less software overhead of operations done by a virtual machine. There are also other types of virtualization for IO and such. All in all, unless you are using a really slow processor or a high density of virtual machines, you will notice a little slow down, but not horrible. VMware's software is good about not creating too much overhead. Intel VT does, however, allow the use of a hypervisor, which is a small OS that handles only IO operations and all systems run on top of that layer. In a hypervisor environment, there is a Domain0 that has control of the hypervisor and is considered the host OS. Then all other virtual machines are DomainU

 

[Denithor]

As stated above, if you don't know what virtualization is, you won't miss it at all. Most desktop users have no use for it.

Consider:

e6300 (65nm, 1.83GHz, 2MB L2 cache) versus e5200 (45nm, 2.5GHz, 2MB L2 cache)

The e5200 is a later generation chip made with a much refined manufacturing process. The 3MB 45nm chips will beat the 4MB 65nm chips of the same clockspeed so the e5200 (with equal L2 cache & 36% faster clockspeed) will have absolutely no problem beating the e6300 in anything. It will also use less power and run considerably cooler - which is why they include a much weaker heatsink/fan (doesn't have to dissipate as much heat).

The whole "Core 2 Duo" versus "Pentium Dual-Core" is just a marketing thing.

 

[ibex333]

Thanks for the explanations. I see I made a good decision.