Intel's 45nm circuits have been out and about for close to 12 months now without any real competition. When chips have been available for such a long period of time they have usually gone through a whole bunch of minor adjustments and changes. These include everything from small bug fixes to substantial improvements in terms of power consumption and higher efficiency. Higher efficiency may sound a bit vague but it means that they have tuned the parameters of the processors to reduce delays thus improving performance. Another pleasant side effect is that the overclocking potential is often improved.
Core 2 Duo E8600 launched recently and with it we saw the introduction of a new stepping. The previous stepping of the E8000 series was "C0", while E8600 had been blessed with the new "E0". At the introduction of a new stepping other models are usually also transferred to the new stepping that also inherits its properties. Normally it takes a while before these updated steppings find their ways into stores but thanks to a pair of eagle eyes we were able to find an E8400 with this stepping.
We start by taking a look at the equipment for this article.
