Cool-n-Quiet vs Speed Step is another AMD win. C-n-Q drops the idle CPU speed much lower than Speed Step. When will Intel ever catch up? That could not be that hard to implement.

Anyway, it's a good thing that the µp makers are trying to put energy efficient µp's on the market. And it's a good thing they start to compete there too. After all thus electricity burners it's a refreshment.

Moved this item from the front page to my blog page. FWIW. :)

The lack of DVI output for the integrated graphics on all the mATX mobos I look at (granted haven't tried TOO hard) makes me sad. If you're going out of your way to get integrated graphics these days who wants to be stuck with VGA only? I hope the G35 'performance' IGP has DVI out common on most mobos...looking to build a nice little badass compact HTPC/second computer around when it comes out.

Intel just can't compete at the low end. They have great high end and mainstream parts, but AMD just eats their lunch at the sub-$130 level:

1. 690G motherboards are cheaper than similarly featured G965 motherboards.
2. The BE-2350 is in stock at Newegg for around $95. The E4300 runs around $119.
3. The BE-2350 outperforms the E4300; note that it finishes the benchmark earlier.
4. The BE-2350 consumes less power at idle and peak than the E4300, and owing to finishing earlier, uses less overall energy too.
5. The BE-2350 supports AMD-V; the E4300 does not support VT-x.

Come on, Intel! We sure could use better-performing low-end parts. And if the Pentium D 9x0 series could have VT-x, why not all the Core 2 Duo parts?

#45,

Just look at the benchmarks here
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6420_7.html#...

E4300 can even outperforms 4200+ in most cases.

BE-2350 has similar spec to 4000+, so there is doubt that E4300 is faster.

And have you looked at the review from techreport ??
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/athlon-x2-be2350/index.x?pg=3

nice work, TR.

#45,

No, the the BE-2350 doesn't outperform E4300

Thanks for that Sunday treat!

Wow, I didn't know that the BE2350 performed better than the c2d-4300, much less the x2-3600. I may have seen it before and forgotten, but now it's lodged in my head for good. And the 690G is definitely better than the G965 isn't it?

Still, it's impressive that Intel's standard sauce is just about as efficient as AMD's special sauce. I don't have much doubt that Intel could do some binning and easily undercut the power efficiency of the BE chips.

And of course, the 4300 is available on every street corner, while the BE chips are just starting to trickle.

what about the G33 + E2160?

It's nice to know that my system (E4300/965P) is so power efficient. Too bad i'm killing it with a overclocked CPU, and an ATI 1900 GPU...

Techreport is establishing itself in my mind as the top review site, and I've read thousands of articles over the years.

this is BS

those are fake benchmarks, ppl. Don't believe them!
j/k

Great job on a Sunday! Love TR. *hugz*....boy, that was ghey.

An entire system with that speed running on ~90W really just blows my mind. Not a difficult thing to do, obviously.

Early last year AMD was smirking about it's"Dual Core" challenge....daring Intel in ads and articles all over the Net to face AMD's "superior" Athlon64 chips....How quiet they've been on that challenge of late....
Good to see Intel putting its hardware out there at the low power end of the scale.While not quite as frugal as the AMDs,they are pretty damn close.

so... where can I buy a x2 3800+ EE SFF these days.

Impressive on both sides. I wish Intel would've made its latest chipset (G33) more efficient.

I've always been disappointed with the lack of coverage of undervolting/underclocking in processor reviews. How about giving custom undervolting a go with CrystalCPUID or RMClock? I think both processors could easily be undervolted beyond what C'n'Q or EIST default to based on what I've read on other forums.

690G graphics only use 3W (granted not doing much). Neat. Knew integrated had to be low power but didn't know how low.

G965 uses the X3000 graphics core, while 945G uses GMA950. This might make it worth using G965 even if 945G is slightly lower power, depending on your needs. Of course using discrete graphics would moot that, so if 945's core itself uses less power then that would be pertinent.

Perhaps Intel knew that the power usage would be slightly higher for them, but also considered that to be mitigated by the fact that the E4300 isn't billed as low-power. They may also believe that it provides a better overall value in terms of power/performance, in things besides just this one benchmark. Does the IGP in G965 use more or less power than 690G, and how does the performance compare? Does the graphics performance matter particularly in most small low-power systems?

What about undervolting? I assume that the BE-2350 can't have voltage reduced too much more, considering it's already been optimized to allow it to go as low as possible, but the E4300 ought to be able to have it dropped a bit. Given the small differences in these systems at stock, might that be enough to seriously make Intel a better low-power solution?

And of course, just wait until Intel does produce an official low-voltage variant of Core2. Not that it will be affordable or possible to get.

wow....thats a lot of front page to take up....

Wow, Sunday surprise. Great job. It's good to see Intel has it's own low wattage offering.

I was wondering about that, too. I appreciate the article, but scrolling through all of that is a bit irritating...

I wonder how the G945 chipset stacks up.. This is the low-end we're discussing after all and motherboards based on the G945 chipset are still plentiful and cheap :)

wow, a measurement in Joules? Cant get more geeky than that.

Thanks Scott.

I just wonder why Intel PR comes up with a challenge if they have not tried it themselves beforhand and found out that they would win. Could it be they had different results?

What is the price of the two combinations (roughly)? (And the power efficiency/$ /bang/$ - it's a really neat twist that TR looks at that, too.)

At the moment, the BE-2350 looks like the perfect home builders CPU for me with it's great overclocking potential. Ah, the sweet memories of the MP2500+... It's just a shame I recently built a new rig, damn!

Wait, so… is this what The Beast has made possible?

Nice addition.

Who said Sundays are boring? :P