Pentium E2140.pdf

New Budget Dual-Core CPUs: Intel Pentium E2160 and Pentium

E2140

Intel Company started shipping new dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture. One of their major advantages is very low price of only $90. But arethese intriguing newcomers as attractive as their counterparts from Core 2 Duo family? We are going to answer this question with our extensive performance

and overclocking tests!

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

05/30/2007 | 05:40 PM

Rapid drop of dual-core processor prices that took place in April led to the minimum prices of $70-$80 for a piece. For about a month already this is the price

you have to pay either for the youngest AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU or for Intel Pentium D working at 3.0-3.2GHz. As a result, processors with twocomputational cores turned into a pretty good solution not only for high-performance and mainstream systems but also for budget computers. Economical

users have already realized that and are shopping for inexpensive dual-core CPUs thus increasing the sales of these particular processor models.

AMD should have been extremely happy about it as their budget processors have so far offered the best price-to-performance ratio. In the upper and

mainstream price ranges, AMD is not doing too good, because Intel’s competing offers based on progressive Core micro-architecture defeat Athlon 64 X2 just

like that. However, in the lower price segment Intel has so far been offering only old Pentium D processors on NetBurst micro-architecture that yielded to

dual-core AMD solutions. This situation helped AMD to avoid dramatic drop in their sales volumes, which would have been very unwelcome until K10

processors came out.

In the meanwhile, Intel continues to expand their product range on Core micro-architecture. And this expansion is very actively moving to the “bottom” ofthe market, towards inexpensive solutions. Core 2 Duo E4000 processors supporting 800MHz bus and based on Allendale core with L2 cache cut down to

2MB started selling just recently. Any day now they should also start offering single-core Celeron 400 with Conroe-L core that will replace Celeron D

processor family.

The Pentium D processors are also destined to soon leave the stage for good, they will be eventually replaced with CPUs on Core micro-architecture.

However, Intel is intending to replace Pentium D processors not with the new low-cost Core 2 Duo CPUs, but with a special dual-core processor series that

will be selling under the same brand name but will have new ratings and progressive micro-architecture. In other words, Pentium D will be replaced withPentium E2000 that strangely enough have nothing to do with the older CPUs bearing the same name.

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We can continue arguing about the need to keep the old name for the CPUs with new micro-architecture, but Intel’s logic in this matter is fairly simple.

Pentium trademark is very well recognized by those users who are not following the new product launches and new technology announcements very closely.

These users usually address their PC as a consumer electronics product, and do not really hunt for highest performance. This is exactly the type of user that

Intel marketing specialists are going to offer their new processor family under the old name. As for us, we don’t really care. If you are reading this article, it

means you will not get confused with the old Pentium name on the new processors.

Well, the new Pentium CPUs are being delivered to distributors as we speak, so it is high time we took a closer look at them. Especially, since a new dual-corePentium E2000 processor family on Core micro-architecture should threaten the position of the youngest AMD Athlon 64 X2 models. In other words, it

should cause certain disposition changes in the processor market that we cannot disregard.

In our today’s article we are going to discuss the peculiarities of new Intel solutions and see how their performance corresponds to their price, so that we

could conclude what sub-$100 processors are going to be proclaimed the today’s best buy for the buck.

Pentium E2160 and Pentium E2140: Closer Look

The first question that comes to mind when we look at the new Pentium processors on Core micro-architecture is about the differences between them and

their Core 2 Duo brothers. Especially since Core 2 Duo product line has CPUs with 1067MHz as well as 800MHz system bus, and with different L2 cachesizes of 4MB and 2MB. According to the product positioning, the new Pentium E2000 series should be cheaper and slower than the youngest Core 2 Duo

CPUs, but feature the same micro-architecture and dual-core design.

“Worsening” the specs of the existing Core 2 Duo processors is not an original tactical approach of Intel marketing specialists. The key peculiarity of Intel

Pentium E2000 processors is even smaller L2 cache of only 1MB. And of course, these processors are intended to work with 800MHz bus that has become

one of the main attributes of an inexpensive computer system these days.

Today the Pentium E2000 processor family consists only of two models: Pentium E2160 and Pentium E2140 with 1.8GHz and 1.6GHz respective clockspeeds. In other words, only the top model in the new family works at the same frequency as the youngest Core 2 Duo processors. The youngest model in the

new family deserves the title of the lowest-frequency dual-core CPU.

I would like to stress that Intel doesn’t regard the launch of their Pentium E2000 processor family as a temporary measure. This family will keep evolving and

by the end of August Intel is planning to add another model to it: Pentium E2180 with 2.0GHz frequency. And according to the global company roadmaps, the

new Pentium processors should strengthen their positions in the lower market segment so significantly that their share in the overall processor shipments

should reach 25% by the end of the year. In other words, Pentium E2000 should become even more popular than Celeron processors in the Budget segment.

As for the technical details about the new Pentium E2000 processors, Intel didn’t have to do any engineering work to launch these solutions. At this time theyare based on the same L2 core stepping that we have already seen before in Core 2 Duo processors with 2MB L2 cache. So, Pentium E2000 is physically

similar to Core 2 Duo E4000 series with half of L2 cache disabled.

Therefore, the detailed specification list of the new Pentium E2000 will not surprise you, I guess:

Pentium E2160 Pentium E2140

Processor core Conroe-1M

Nominal frequency 1.8 GHz 1.6 GHz

Bus frequency 800 MHz

Multiplier 9x 8x

L2 cache 1MB

Packaging LGA775

Production process 65 nm

Core stepping L2

TDP 65 W

Core voltage 1.225-1.325 V

Enhanced Halt State (C1E) Technology Yes

Enhanced Intel Speedstep Yes

Execute Disable Bit Yes

Intel EM64T Yes

Intel Thermal Monitor 2 Yes

Intel Virtualization Technology None

All specs except clock frequencies and L2 cache memory size are identical to those of Core 2 Duo processors on Allendale core with L2 stepping. Therefore,


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the new Pentium E2000 processors, unlike the budget Celeron, feature the complete set of Demand Based Switching technologies including Enhanced Intel

Speedstep, although no Virtualization Technology support.

The CPU-Z utility produced an expected report for our Pentium E2160 and Pentium E2140 processors:

The screenshots are not the only thing proving that these processors feature L2 core stepping. The electronic components soldered to the bottom of the CPU

chip also indicate the same.

The bottom side of Pentium E2000 is absolutely identical to that of Core 2 Duo E4000 processor series on Allendale core with L2 cache cut down in half.

So, the newcomers stand out only thanks to their marking.

Note that Pentium E2000 processors are marked as Pentium Dual-Core. At this time Intel is also offering a few mobile CPUs with similar characteristicsunder the same brand name, however, we will not dwell on them today.

Some Information on Intel Dual-Core Processors

The launch of Pentium E2000 has cast new light on the entire dual-core processor lineup. Now the company can claim that they have CPUs on Core micro-

architecture positioned for any price range. However, it may be a little difficult to find your way in this variety of models. To avoid any possible confusion we

decided to put together a table that will describe all contemporary (and sometimes upcoming) dual-core Intel processors and enlist their major features and

specifications.

For a more illustrative picture we have also added the CPUs with 1333MHz bus that are coming out this summer and processors from Intel Penryn family thatwill be manufactured with 45nm process and are due to start selling early next year.

Here is what we came up with:


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Click to enlarge

Influence of L2 Cache Size on Conroe Processors Performance

As new Pentium E2000 processors emerged in the market, we got three types of dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture equipped with a shared L2

cache of 4MB, 2MB and 1MB capacity. Therefore it would be extremely interesting to see how the size of L2 cache affects the processor performance in

widespread applications. To check this out we compared the performance of Pentium E2160 processor working at 1.8GHz frequency and featuring 1MB L2

cache against that of a Core 2 Duo E4300 processor with 1.8GHz frequency and 2MB L2 cache and against that of a hypothetical Core 2 Duo processors

running at 1.8GHz and featuring 4MB L2 cache. Since there is no processor like that supporting 800MHz bus and 4MB L2 cache in Intel Core 2 Duo lineup,we used an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor with reduced clock frequency multiplier of 9x and bus speed set at 800MHz.

So, the diagrams below will show the performance of CPUs on Core micro-architecture that worked at 1.8GHz speed, supported 800MHz bus and featuring

1MB, 2MB and 4MB L2 cache onboard.


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During video encoding the size of L2 cache doesn’t affect the performance that much. The results of CPUs with 4MB and 1MB cache differ by about 3-4%.

The same situation takes place during audio encoding. However, this time the performance difference approaches 5% and is primarily noticed when we move

from 2MB L2 cache to only 1MB.

Microsoft Office Word 2007 loses a lot of speed when the L2 cache gets smaller. Moreover, if the CPU with a 2MB L2 cache is only 5% slower than its

counterpart with a 4MB L2 cache, then further L2 cache size reduction results in a 15-16% performance drop compared with the “fully-fledged” CPU.


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Microsoft Office Excel 2007 is also pretty sensitive to the changes in L2 cache size. However, this time the major performance drop occurs when we switch

from 4MB L2 cache to 2MB, while further L2 cache size reduction doesn’t have much effect any more.

Archiving can also be considered a typical office task, and the situation here is very similar to what we have just seen in Word 2007.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 is the most indifferent application to the size of L2 cache memory.


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In Adobe Premiere 2.0 the performance difference between CPUs featuring 4MB and 2MB of L2 cache is hardly noticeable. However, as we reduce the L2

cache size to 1MB, the performance immediately drops down by 5%.

The results in one of the most popular music composing applications are moderately dependent on the L2 cache size. The performance difference between the

CPU with the biggest and smallest L2 cache doesn’t go beyond 5-6%.

3ds max 8 doesn’t really care about the L2 cache size. The results delta in this application lies within 3%.

So, we can conclude that the size of L2 cache memory affects the performance in office tasks in the first place. As for most applications dealing withmultimedia content creation and editing, you shouldn’t overestimate the importance of large L2 cache. You will only be able to improve the performance just

a little bit by choosing a Core based CPU with the maximum L2 cache: 3-5% at the most.


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We decided to discuss the results obtained in gaming applications in the end, as they would be completely different. Take a look:

True, the games are very sensitive to the changes in CPU L2 cache memory size. The biggest effect is noticeable when we drop the size of L2 cache to 1MB.

That is why the new Pentium E2000 processors will hardly become a good choice for gamers. It makes much more sense to invest in more expensive Core 2

Duo in this case: even a CPU from E4000 series will do if you are looking to build an inexpensive gaming system.

Testbed and Methods

Besides the investigation of the L2 cache size effect on the performance of dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture, we would also like to check out

the performance of the new Pentium E2000 solutions compared with that of their competitors. The official prices for the new Pentium E2160 and PentiumE2140 have been set at $84 and $74 respectively. The previous generation processors, Pentium D 935 and Pentium D 925 on NetBurst micro- architecture,


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cost about the same these days. Moreover, you can also buy AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 3600+ for about the same price. These six budget dual-core

solutions offered for less than $100 a piece will be the main heroes of our today’s test session.

As a result, we used the following hardware to build our test platform this time:

CPUs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Socket AM2, 2.0GHz, 2x512KB L2, Windsor);

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ (Socket AM2, 1.9GHz, 2x512KB L2, Brisabane);Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 (LGA775, 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2, Allendale);

Intel Pentium D 935 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x2MB L2, Presler);

Intel Pentium D 925 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x2MB L2, Presler);

Intel Pentium E2160 (LGA775, 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2, Conroe-1M);

Intel Pentium E2160 (LGA775, 1.6GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2, Conroe-1M).

Mainboards:ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI);

ASUS P5K Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35);

Memory: 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12);

Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB;

HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD;

OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x86.

The tests were performed with mainboards’ BIOS Setup parameters adjusted for maximum performance.

Performance

Futuremark: Synthetic Benchmarks

Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors do not work any wonders in the popular 3DMark06 testing suite. Nevertheless, they still show some performance

advantage over the predecessors and competitors from the same price range. Although Athlon 64 X2 3600+ still manages to slightly surpass Pentium E2140

working at radically lower 1.6GHz clock speed.


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PCMark05 is pretty well optimized for processors with NetBurst micro-architecture, so the leadership here belongs to Pentium D CPUs. New Pentium E2000

processors win the second prize defeating the Athlon 64 X2 processors with corresponding prices.

Office Applications


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We have already mentioned that CPUs with Core micro-architecture perform at a very high level in Microsoft Office 2007 applications. The new Pentium

E2160 and E2140 processors are no exception here: they outperform all their competitors pretty significantly in some cases.

Data compression is a different type of task. At least, the results we observe here are a little different from what we have seen before. However, PentiumE2160 processor still wins this race and becomes the fastest sub-$100 offer among dual-core solutions. However, at the same time, Pentium E2140 loses to

Athlon 64 X2 3600+ and Pentium D 925 priced identically.

Audio and Video Encoding


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During audio and video encoding with any of the codecs we used the new Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors on Core micro-architecture can boast higherresults than any of the competing Pentium D and Athlon 64 X2 solutions.

Image, Audio and Video Editing


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The situation is very similar during image and audio editing. Pentium E2000 processors leave their competitors far behind thanks to their progressive Core

micro-architecture. And note that this is also true for the Pentium E2140 with the “ridiculous” 1.6GHz clock speed. Even this buddy is winning a confident

victory over Pentium D 925 and Athlon 64 X2 3600+.

Non-linear video editing tasks reveal slightly different results. Although Pentium E2160 is the fastest of all sub-$100 dual-core processors, Pentium E2140

still yields a little bit to Athlon 64 X2 3600+.

Final Rendering


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The results are pretty ambiguous in final rendering applications. The leadership goes to dual-core processors with Core micro-architecture in 3ds max 8, while

in CINEBENCH (showing the performance in Cinema 4D suite) gives the laurels to the youngest Athlon 64 X2 CPUs.

Scientific Calculations

Athlon 64 X2 processors are traditionally famous for their high results in ScienceMark 2.0 test that measures the system performance during the work of

molecular dynamics algorithms. Although the new Pentium E2000 processors outperform the previous generation Intel Pentium D, they still cannot catch upwith the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 3600+ priced similarly.

Gaming Applications


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We have already mentioned earlier in this article that reduced to 1MB L2 cache is a significant slowdown for the Pentium E2000 series in gaming

applications. Judging by the results of our comparative tests we see another proof to that point. Although Pentium E2000 processors outperform Pentium D

935 and Pentium D 925, they are still unable to reach the performance level of Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 3600+. I have to draw your attention to the fact that

this whole situation is pretty funny: games are actually almost the only application where the youngest CPUs with Core micro-architecture cannot even dreamof competing with their immediate rivals.

Besides a few real games we have also included the results of a benchmark based on Valve Source engine that will be used for future games. It estimates the

system performance during the calculation of environmental gaming physics.

The situation here is a little bit different. Pentium E2160 levels out with Athlon 64 X2 3800+, while Pentium E 2140 outperforms Athlon 64 X2 3600+.

We have also included the chess benchmark based on a well-known Fritz 9 engine into this gaming test session.

Once again the picture is totally different. New inexpensive Intel processors on Core micro-architecture get ahead of their competitors.


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Overclocking

Low price of the Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors as well as Core micro-architecture they are based on make them extremely interesting for

overclocking experiments. Especially, since they are based on L2 core that can be overclocked to 3.2-3.4Ghz, according to our previous experiments. As we

have already mentioned above, the L2 cache memory size doesn’t matter that much for majority of tasks, so the new CPUs may demonstrate pretty decent

performance when overclocked to their maximum frequencies.

To confirm or deny these suppositions we decided to take a closer look at the overclocking potential of the new processors in question. During our

overclocking experiments we used Zalman CNPS9700 LED processor cooler.

First of all we decided to test Pentium E2160 processor. We overclocked it by raising the FSB frequency, with the clock multiplier remaining at its nominal 9x.

By increasing the processor Vcore to 1.5V we could push the FSB frequency to 378MHz thus hitting 3.4GHz clock speed. The CPU was running stably at this

speed and passed the ORTHOS stability check.

This is a very good result, as we overclocked our CPU by 89% above the nominal in this case and even exceeded the nominal frequency of the top CPU on

Core micro-architecture from the Core 2 Extreme family.

The second processor, Pentium E2140, didn’t overclock that well at all. In the same testing conditions, i.e. with 1.5V Vcore, we managed to increase its FSBfrequency only to 355MHz. further increase led to system failing to boot. Further experiments revealed that this CPU can even work without Vcore

adjustment at this FSB speed, which means we have hit the “FSB wall” for this processor. This problem wouldn’t let us continue our overclocking attempts,

and we had to admit that the maximum result for this processor would be 2.84GHz, which doesn’t look that appealing at all especially against the background

of the previous result.


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However, you should always remember, that overclocking is a lottery to some extent, so far not everyone will score high in it. We decided to find out what

you could get from overclocking with some good luck on your side by comparing the performance of the Pentium E2160 overclocked to 3.4GHz with that of

Intel’s top dual-core processor – Core 2 Extreme X6800.

The tests were performed in the configuration described above:

Pentium E2160@ 3.4GHz

Core 2 ExtremeX6800

3DMark06 6607 6481

3DMark06, CPU 2847 2532

PCMark05 8490 8159

PCMark05, CPU 8597 7445

AutoGK 2.4/Xvid 1.2, fps 46.28 41.27

AutoGK 2.4/DivX 6.6, fps 68.98 62.13

H.264 Encoding, Apple Quicktime Pro 7, sec 278 334

mp3 Encoding, Apple iTunes 7, sec 99 114

Word 2007 (Document Compare), sec 42 38

Excel 2007, sec 38.95 40.15

7-Zip 4.45, Compressing, KB/s 4118 4209

Photoshop CS3, sec 67 75

Sonar 6.2, sec 106 110

Premiere Pro 2.0, sec 154 177

3ds Max 8 (SPECapc), Rendering 4.78 4.39

CINEBENCH 9.5 1038 910

Fritz 9 Chess Benchmark 4624 4147

ScienceMark 2.0, Primordia 1822 1561

Quake 4, 1024x768 High Quality 123.34 126.96

F.E.A.R., Medium Quality 120 112

Company of Heroes, 1024x768 121.9 126.4

Supreme Commander 16194 16148

Valve Source Engine particle benchmark 52 52

The table above shows the advantage of the overclocked Pentium E2160 very clearly. It loses to Core 2 Extreme X6800 with 4MB L2 cache only in a few

applications. It means that you can squeeze the performance of Intel’s top dual-core processor from a sub-$100 CPU, no matter how unbelievable it sounds.

By the way, unfortunately, you cannot achieve the same result by overclocking Athlon 64 X2 3600+ or 3800+. The performance results of the 3GHz Athlon

64 X2 6000+ prove this true. It loses noticeably to Core 2 Extreme x6800, and moreover, youngest Athlon 64 X2 processors will very rarely overclock

beyond 3GHz in common conditions (with air cooling only).

Conclusion

All in all Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors made a great entrance. They have pushed the performance of budget solutions to a totally new level. With the

price of less than $90 and promising Core micro-architecture these processors can become a great basis for contemporary low-cost systems. From this

standpoint they look much better than the Pentium D processors on NetBurst micro-architecture that used to be the only offering for this segment.

Of course, the performance level of Pentium E2160 and E2140 processors doesn’t look as mind-blowing as that of their Core 2 Duo counterparts. Their

relatively low clock frequencies and L2 cache cut down to only 1MB do their “dirty deed”. However, in the majority of real applications these processors

outperform all alternative solutions. Although I have to specify something here. When we speak of comparatively high performance of these new processors,it is important to keep in mind that they still lose to the youngest Athlon 64 X2 models in most games where the size of L2 cache memory matters a lot.

However, the results of our overclocking experiments can make all your doubts vanish. Since Pentium E2160 and E2140 are based on Allendale L2 core

stepping these CPUs will overclock approximately to the same frequencies as Core 2 Duo E4000 series. As a result, if you are lucky enough you may be able

to get your new processor to work as fast as the top of the line dual-core Core 2 Extreme processors, which is a very good deal considering it will cost you

less than $100.


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Pentium E2140.pdf

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