Intel's "tick-tock" strategy gives us a very early glimpse at the future of micro processing. If all goes well, Moore's Law should
be as true in 2010 as it is today…Can a $450 cpu beat a $1299 Extreme Edition QX9650
in gaming performance?The answer is yes, not only can it Overclock to a much higher FSB and clock speed, but it can do it at a much lower Voltage & tempreature.
The layout of discrete components on the bottom of any Intel CPU is an easy way to quickly determine which product series you hold in your hands. This is what a 45nm E8000-series dual-core looks like
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Test setup
-XFX 790i Motherboard
-Intel E8500 45nm
-2 x 1 gig Corsair Dominator 1800 DDR3
-4 x Raptor 150gigs in Raid 0
-Windows Vista 32
-174.74 Drivers
So far the E8500 has shown great overclocking potential, easliy beating my QX9650 while keeping temps & voltages less. From the few tests that i have ran it seem like the E8500 is the perfect CPU for gamers, there is no need to spend huge amount of money on Extreme Edition or even quad core CPU's as i have seen no gain in any game as yet.Current Wolfdale range, specifications & approximate prices:
- E8200 (2.66 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 8x Multi) - $269
- E8400 (3.0 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 9x Multi) - $369
- E8500 (3.16 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 9.5x Multi) - $459
These prices are very good considering their overclocking potential.
My first test I bumped the volts up to 1.3v and set the FSB to 1800 which was 4.05ghz. I was able to run the
crysis benchmark and Futuremark 3D06 without a problem, the same speeds on the QX9650 required 1.5v to be stable,
Now I tried 4.2 ghz without increasing the voltage and I still was able to run a few benchmarks while 
maintaining very low tempreatures.
I also got Vista to boot at 4.7ghz with 1.6v but the
temps where too high. Later I will test to see how
low I can get the volts at the magic 4ghz.
As for tempreatures, idle at stock speeds was 26c,
at 4.0ghz idle was 34c. Load temreatures never
went past 44c. I am considering leaving this CPU in
this system, as it is good in every way.
Futuremark 3D06 ran without a problem at 4.2ghz with very low voltages required. This was the highest Acheivable clockspeed at under 1.4v.'
I lost about 1,800 points in Futuremark 3D06 due to the cpu score.500 FSB wasn't a problem, I had to bump the volts up to 1.49v to get it stable, but manages to run all Benchmark tests. The Load Tempreature reached 52c and idle was 39c.
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love it, and for $220 from work you cant go wrong :D
still need that evga 790i FTW PWM so i can loose this vdroop. anyways, nice review 10/10