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| Intel Core 2 E6300 – The Enthusiast Choice? |
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Page 2 of 3 Why? Or Why not Athlon64 or Pentium?
AMD's initial counter to Core2Duo (and to the soon to be launched Kentsfield Quad Cores) is their 4x4 initiative. Though the idea of selling two bundled dual core CPU's at an attractive price seems compelling, the realities associated with this approach just aren't realistic for the budget enthusiast. To be honest, we don't think it's particularly realistic for the high end enthusiast with deep pockets either. 4X4 will initially be a very short lived solution for starters. With AMD's own quad-core Barcelona CPU's becoming available within the next two quarters, it's hardly compelling to buy two dual cores now, even if you can swap quad cores into the same socket 6 months from now. A quad core system is going to leave a lot of it's performance potential on the table anyway, and this is a problem Intel and AMD will have to cope with going forward, simply because the software that can leverage such a system doesn't really exist yet. The same can be said to a lesser degree for dual cores, but in the relevancy department, there's still more intrinsic value in dual core right now. Lastly, AMD's 4x4 initiative requires motherboards and memory, and dual socket boards probably wont come flying out of manufacturers anytime soon, beyond the obvious server-oriented companies like Supermicro, Tyan, and Iwill. Bottom line AMD's 4x4 is a high end initiative and irrelevant to the vast majority of people, apart from being vapor at this point.
 I don't think anyone would argue too
hard for an Intel Pentium4 or Pentium D as an budget enthusiast CPU
to build a system around, certainly not at this point. Sure there are
some amazing bargains to be had, most notably the Pentium D 805, as
it's cheap and seems to overclock well. Still, on a clock for clock
basis, Netburst CPU's are just utterly schooled by Athlon64's, and
now by Intel Core2Duo's. I'd recommend some of these excellent values
for a kids system, a basic system for a relative, or for a simple and
cheap spare system, but I don't see any reason to consider the older
Netburst CPU's at all for an enthusiast rig, regardless of the price
advantages you can find.
One final argument to clarify is the single vs dual core issue. Let's be honest, many enthusiasts are gamers first and foremost, and multithreaded games aren't exactly falling out of the sky, at least not yet. In this regard, there's still an argument to be made for a single core cpu. Supplies of single core Athlon64's are drying up to almost non existence, and I couldn't in good conscience recommend a higher end Sempron despite the sweet seeming prices. Pentium4's? No....Just say no! :P Though most games cannot take advantage of multiple CPU's, YOU certainly can in increasing your productivity. There's a seamlessness to multitasking and running multiple applications in a dual core environment that just makes the day to day experience of using a PC that much more pleasant, even more so these days with people commonly running multiple applications at once. The age of the single core is over, so let's just let sleeping dogs lie. So, let's conclude this little diatribe with the key points of contention, and get this over with.
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