It was back in July 2006 when we got our first look at the then brand new Core 2 Duo processor technology. The processor code-named 'Conroe' was initially released in four different flavors ranging from the E6300 (1.86GHz) all the way up to the E6700 model running at 2.66GHz, and from the get go we knew Intel had a winner on its hands.

But for some time now we've been waiting for Intel to move on to a more efficient and highly hyped 45nm fabrication technology, which was released just last month. The new 45nm Wolfdale line-up includes the E8200 (2.66GHz), E8400 (3.00GHz) and E8500 (3.16GHz) processors that are expected to operate at lower temperatures - and thus reduce fan noise - as well as receive newer SSE4.1 instructions and ship with a larger 6MB L2 cache.


It should not take pages of benchmark results to convince you that the E8500 is a better buy than the E6850 as that clearly is the case. However, those currently in possession of an E6000 series processor or even older Intel or AMD processors, may still be quite interested to see how much faster these new E8000 series CPUs are, and if they are worth upgrading to. The non-race is on then!

Read the complete review.