bit-tech Shopping: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor

Rating: 10

Time with product: 6 Months

Strengths: better performance than 8500 for less money

Weaknesses: overclock can be trickier than some processors

Summary: Great processor for the money. If you're building a PC for gaming or more serious processor intensive tasks, this processor has the best price/performance ratio out there for now. Later, when more apps have been written to take advantage of 4 or more cores, that will change. But for now, this is the way to go.If you take it slow and do your research, you can easily get this processor to 3.4 or 3.6GHz using the stock cooler -- no need for an aftermarket processor cooler.Check the temperature carefully, though. This processor has a reputation for being tricky with temps. In my experience, this reputation is well-earned.Still, it only took me a few hours to get my E8400 up to 3.4GHz using the stock cooler. That's much better than the E8500, at a much lower cost.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 3 Months

Strengths: CHEAP, FAST, 45 nm, GOOD FOR CRYSIS AND DIRECT X 10

Weaknesses: COULD BE FASTER BUT I DONT OVERCLOCK BUT U CAN ALWAS OVERCLOCK THIS CPU TO BE ALOT FASTER.

Summary: GOES REALLY GOOD WITH A MSI P7N PLATINUM MOBO, AND A 9600GT PLAYS ALL THE DX10 GAMES GREAT AT 1440x900 ALL SETTINGS SET TO HIGH. SO THIS IS A GREAT BANG FOR YOUR BUCK CPU!

Rating: 10

Time with product: 4

Strengths: 45nm, 6mb cache, 1333mhz

Weaknesses: none

Summary: This is a great processor that appears to overclock well. Along with a great price.I used to use AMD, and when I first installed this I was shocked to see that Intel has no pins on their cpu's. I never knew that before... I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a negative.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 1 Days

Strengths: Low power; dropping in price; great performance

Weaknesses: Not compatible with many motherboards

Summary: I had an ASUS P5W-DH motherboard. This came out in summer 2006, and was one of the first motherboards to support Intel's new (at the time) Core2Duo CPUs. The board worked great with my E6600 for 1-1/2 years. I decided to upgrade to the E8400 when they came out, so I updated the BIOS and installed the new CPU. I proceeded to have a slew of compatiblity problems. The temperature readings were out of sight, even with my Zalman CPU cooler. Reading up, this was a problem with many systems. The other issue was lockups and bootups. I couldn't get my Crucial 4-4-4-12 PC2-6400 RAMs to be stable at any speed. I ended up selling the CPU, as it wouldn't work in my system.As a result, I'm not really going to ding the processor, but wanted people to be aware before they go for an upgrade on an existing motherboard. Read up user forums on compatibility of the E8400 w/ the motherboard.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 3

Strengths: Very fast. Running at 3.16 GHz no problems.

Weaknesses: none

Summary: I used to be strictly an AMD buyer, but since AMD hasn't been very competitive with Intel for speed, I chose this processor, and I am very pleased with it. I would highly recommend this processor to anyone that wants to upgrade.