[ExtremePC]

The Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, specifically the e6400 offers a very price competitive entry into the Core 2 Duo family. At the time of writing you can pick one up for the $280 - $340 mark depending on where you shop and / or if you shop around.

Left in its stock incarnation the CPU rates a little under the AMD FX62 in most benchmarks which is quite an achievement for a CPU priced a third of the cost. However the warm fuzzy feeling really kicks in when you overclock one of these guys, using the stock cooler and standard cheap DDR2 memory modules you can get the CPU up to 2.8Ghz (350 FSB)with total stability, increase the CPU voltage just a little bit and the 3.0Ghz (375 FSB) ceiling becomes no obstacle. With quality DDR2 modules (using Micron9 chips) you can typically expect an overclock of between 3.2Ghz - 3.6Ghz with a little CPU and DDR voltage tweaking. watercooled rigs have been seen on various forums getting these CPU's running at 4.0Ghz - 4.5Ghz! which constitutes a 200% overclock! We have not seen percentage overclocks like this since the days of the 286's 4.77MHz to 12MHz overclocks.

On benchmarks, its also interesting to note that the 2Mb to 4Mb cache increase in Core 2 Duo models above the e6400 make up for as little as 8% difference in only some benchmarks!

Overall the e6400 offers a surprising back for buck value that's hard to beat.