Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Review

Presenting the Core 2 Duo E6850! This Desktop processor is a powerhouse in Intel's high-end series. Launched in 2006, it packs 2 cores and 2 threads. It runs at a base clock speed of 3GHz, can accelerate to 3GHz, and has a power requirement of 65W, making it an ideal choice for your gaming system. The Core 2 Duo E6850 is a product of the advanced Conroe 65nm technology and is a part of the distinguished Core 2 Duo series.

The Core 2 Duo E6850 is the more expensive version of the Core 2 Duo E6750, and it shows with its higher base and boost clock speeds: 3 GHz and 3 GHz, respectively. That's a nice boost in speed, but the real game changer is the higher power delivery (PPT). This lets the motherboard pump more juice (up to 142W) to the Core 2 Duo E6850 compared to the Core 2 Duo E6750's limit of 65W. This extra power allows the Core 2 Duo E6850 to crank up the boost clocks even more aggressively, on both single and multiple cores. That means the performance gap between these two CPUs might be bigger than what the specs on paper suggest.

For gamers, both the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ and Core 2 Duo E6850 are great choices. They're neck and neck, with a slight edge to the AMD CPU if you don't overclock it. The Core 2 Duo E6850's base performance can be achieved with cheaper RAM (around $90), whereas the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ needs faster RAM ($110-$120) to hit the frame rates we showed. The price difference is small though, and with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 graphics card, your GPU will bottleneck your performance anyway. BottleneckAtPlay

If you don't care too much about overclocking and max boost speeds, then the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 is a good option for $50.9. It also has 2 cores and 2 threads, but with slightly lower clock speeds (2.66GHz base and 2.667GHz boost).