Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.80GHz Processor

Great value in a processor. Unbelivable price to...

Strengths: Good out of box performance. Exceptional overclocking ability. BSEL mod for cheap performance on some non-overclocking motherboards. Relatively low heat processor.

Weakness: 2mb of cache vs. the 4mb of the 6 series. Need a motherboard dedicated to over clocking to get the most out of this chip. Batch to batch variation on how high it can be overclocked.

This chip is phenomenal. I have mine overclocked to 2.8ghz easily on stock voltage (8x multiplier, 333FSB) using some cheap DDR2 ram I purchased. Using an asus P5N32-SLI Plus for a motherboard. I would recommend researching the motherboard extensively, some motherboards will take a "BSEL" pin mod which will make over clocking much easier on an inexpensive motherboard (it fools the system into...

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Great performance and value

Strengths: highly overclockable

Weakness: none

The E4300 is a great CPU for overclockers. With the stock heat sink / fan, I can get 3GHz (333MHz * 9) with only 1.35V vCore. It's multiplier is 9 (vs. E6300's 8) so you don't have to use super high FSB for overclocking. Generally speaking, Core 2 Dual is awesome. You may already know, 1MHz in C2D is not the same as 1MHz in, say, P4. A 3GHz C2D beats 3GHz P4 by a great margin, while generating...

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Intel Core 2 Duo E4300

Strengths: Price, overclockable, 9x multiplier

Weakness: Only 2mb cache, needs aftermarket hsf

With a good aftermarket hsf this processor can easily be overclocked to 3.0 GHz. The earlier produce chips overclocked better but it is the luck of the draw. You can get high overclocks with DDR2-800 memory and P965 boards due to the multiplier and fsb speed. There are a lot of resources for overclocking this chip. Price has now gone down to point that it can be fun to play around with.

Best performace/value within Core 2 Duo family

Strengths: Overclocks like crazy

Weakness: 2MB of cache

So far I've built 3 systems using this processor. All of them overclocked to 2.8-3.2 using stock heatsink/fan and average memory (but a good mobo). This chip, when overclocked, is good at both paralel processing (because of true dual core) and linear processing such as audio/video conversion (thanks to the sheer speed). Don't push it too hard, though: your system components will deteriorate...

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Best value processor

Strengths: Low power consumption, High overclockability, Awesome performance

Weakness: Noisy stock heatsink/fan

As the youngest brother of the Core 2 Duo family, E4300 is the absoultely best choice you can make this day. Highly overclockable, low power consumption (About 40W even under maximum load -- equivalent to mainstream graphic card power consumption!), and superior performance. But you might also want to consider AMD's X2 for their low price. But if you consider the performance as a key feature, you...

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Excellent performance HD Video and complex Flash...

Strengths: Significant performance over P4-3Ghz with very cool temp

Weakness: slightly pricy

I have done a number of really challenging performance tests to see for myself what kind of performance boost Core2Duo has in comparison to P4 technology. Core2Duo is a flat out winner by a big margin. CPU Usage is 20-30 less than Pe, CPU temp is 30C lower! Tested running 1920x108 HDvideo simultaneously running a complex Flash media with a lot of dithering.

Excellent choice for budget performance system

Strengths: Great Price, Performance, Temperature and Durability

Weakness: n/a

I read all the reviews for the e6xxx series and they got rave reviews, until this processor came out. It runs at 800mhz fsb which allows you to overclock it without taxing the motherboard. On top of that you can overclock the cpu at over 3ghz without using too much voltage. The temperature needs some cooling, but nothing crazy. Basically it cost me $150 to get the performance of the extreme...

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The BEST C2D processor for price/performance

Strengths: VERY overclockable

Weakness: No virtualization, even though I don't need it.

I was able to get a 80% overclock out of this processor, going from 1.8GHz to 3.23GHz using a Gigabyte DS3 rev 1.3. With a price point of ~$113, there's no better processor to buy. There is no virtualization technology, but very few people will ever need it.

Good Overclock

Strengths: Good overclocking, value

Weakness: Need better than stock heatsink to overclock

I have this running on my MSI mobo overclocked to 3.2Ghz using a Zalman 9500 and crucial ballistix without problems. It may not be the fastest or highest overclocker, but for video editing and other mutitasking this processor can't be beat for the speed/price.

Core 2 Duo E4300 Dual Core Processor

Strengths: Great price to value ratio! Well, its a C2D, so you know it performs excellently. I have it paired with a Gigabyte DS3 board and 2gb of GSkill ram and it works well so far.

Weakness: Careful when installing the cooler. I felt like I was going to break the motherboard in half when I was pushing the pins in.

Pushing the locking mechanism and the latch down is really scary at first, it really takes a good amount of pressure to get it down, I thought I might've broke mine but it's fine. just make sure you align the triangle on the corner correctly and you'll have it up and running!