Currently sitting on the test bed we have a number of Core 2 processors including the E6300, E6400, E6600 and E6700. In the past we have tested the QX6700, X6800 and Q6600 processors, all of which were very impressive in their own way! However, out of all these Core 2 Duo/Quad and Extreme processors, my favorite is not the $1000 US Core 2 Extreme QX6700 featuring four lightning fast cores! Furthermore it is not the top of the range Core 2 Duo E6700 processor priced at $500 US with two cores working at 2.66GHz. Rather, my favorite of all the Core 2 processors is the little E6300, priced at just $180 US.

Sure the E6300 is the least impressive Core 2 processor officially available at this point in time, and yes it does only feature the 2MB L2 cache. Being the slowest Core 2 processor does have its advantages, as the E6300 is priced very well making it an ideal option for those seeking a cheap upgrade solution. However, what really makes the E6300 a must have processor, is its overclocking abilities. Just recently we posted an article aimed at helping beginners overclock their E6300 processor from the default 1.86GHz frequency all the way to 3.50GHz. This massive 1.64GHz (88%) boost in frequency significantly increased the performance of our E6300 processor.

This allowed us to take a relatively cheap processor and tweak it to out perform $500+ processors, without breaking a sweat. Late last year we posted another article titled “The new Core 2 Duo’s” which looked at eight of the suspected upcoming Core 2 processors that should be released this year. Among the eight, the most interesting upcoming models were the E4300 and E4400 processors, both of which took a step backwards. Rather the utilize the existing 266MHz FSB, they were reduced to the older 200MHz FSB and limited to the 2MB L2 cache.

The E4300 and E4400 are the new light weight kings and with a suggested retail value of $130 and $150 in the second quarter of this year, they are also going to be very affordable. Furthermore due to the limited 800MHz FSB, these processors should work with a much broader range of chipsets and more importantly overclock like mad. While the price of the E4300 is expected to fall to $130 during the 2Q, it is currently selling for around $170, pricing it very close to that of the E6300. The price drop is one of those things that is said to happen, but whether it will or not is anyone’s guess.

The E4300 is not listed on the Intel website and is still yet to be officially released. That said, I was amazed to find that 2 weeks ago now, it was possible to purchase one of these processors online in Australia. Therefore, without wasting any time we snapped up an E4300 so that we may put it to the test, an overclocking test. Paying full price the processor worked out to be $180 US, meaning the E6300 could have been purchased for roughly the same price. Had I not been purchasing this processor for the purpose of this article I would have just gone with the E6300.

The motherboard of choice was the Gigabyte 965P-DS3P (2.0), which is practically the same as the 965P-DS3 (2.0) used in our previous article. Priced at $170 also makes this motherboard quite affordable for a high-end Intel LGA775 motherboard. While the motherboard is a critical component that plays a vital role in the success of any overclock, the memory is also very important. Unfortunately, any memory designed for overclocking tends to be very pricey. This being the case we have decided to take some good quality DDR2-800 memory and simply overclock that. The G.Skill (F2-6400CL4D-1GBPK) 1GB DDR2-800 kit is very good value at just $125 US.

This memory is very capable of operating at 1000MHz if need be, using CAS 5-5-5-15 timings with 2.2 volts of power. Of course we will explain more about the timings and frequencies that this memory can operate at. This article will be based off the “F4” BIOS revision for the Gigabyte 965P-DS3P (2.0), which was released on the 8th of January 2007. This is the latest BIOS revision for this motherboard and it brings official 1333MHz FSB support, which will enabled this motherboard to support the upcoming Core 2 Duo processors that will use this new front side bus. For now let's move on to explore the BIOS...