deadrats' review of the E7400

[deadrats]

or "upgrading from a quad core to a dual core", if you prefer.

as the byline to the title of this post suggests i just went from a quad core cpu to a dual core cpu and the results are great. here's how it came to pass:

i had been been using a phenom 9500 on an msi K9A2 CF motherboard which uses the 790X chipset and its performance was decent all around, faster than the E6400 on an Asrock motherboard that it had replaced, but the speed advantage under anything less than well-threaded apps, like a few encoding apps, wasn't that great and in fact if i overclocked the E6400 to 2.4ghz from its stock 2.13gz speed, the 9500 was actually a bit slower. in the 9500's defense i should point out that it was a way better multi-tasking cpu, providing a much smoother computing experience, though it runs HOT, even paired with a big thermaltake copper cooler and 2 case fans arranged so that air flow is kept consistent, i.e one is set as intake and one as exhaust.

so it was that when i saw that microcenter pc has the Q8200 on sale for $100 i decided to jump at the offer and headed to the only store they have in nj to pick one of those bad boys up. much to my disappointment, i was told that they only had 19 left in the store (their website had listed 37 in store the night before) and that all 19 had been reserved through their site for other customers.

i decided to pick up an E7400, also at $100 and a gigabyte g31m-es2l energy saver motherboard at $60. the E7400 has 3mb L2, is clocked at a default of 2.8ghz, uses a 10.5 multiplier and defaults to a 1066 mhz fsb (more on this in a bit). it also has a thermal design power rating of 65w versus the 95w rating the 9500 has.

when i opened the E7400's packaging i was shocked at the diminutive size of the stock intel cooler, its all aluminum, short, light and quite frankly had me worried as to whether or not it would be sufficient at even stock speeds, let alone the overclocked speed i had in mind. i'll tell you guys right now, this cpu runs so cool the stock cooler is more than enough, with my 9500, even with the massive copper cooler and 2 case fans the side of the case would get hot to the touch, with the E7400, even with no case fans the computer case doesn't feel warm at all.

one thing to keep in mind is that with this motherboard, the E7400 runs at 2ghz when idle, as confirmed by cpu-z and ramps up immediately to max speed when a load is placed on it.

when overclocking, there are a number of simple rules to remember when choosing the cpu and motherboard, the first and foremost being that if you want a reliable overclock that won't fry the system and will be stable, you should always overclock to within the cpu's and motherboards capabilities, a rule that seems like a self-contradiction at first.

to understand what i mean, we need to remember that there are 2 ways to overclock a cpu: increase the multiplier and/or raise the fsb speed. in choosing your cpu and motherboard look for a cpu with a high multiplier and a low fsb that simultaneously is based on an architecture that is designed to support a much higher fsb and pair it with a motherboard that supports the higher clocked members of said cpu family.

for instance: the penryns are designed by default to work with a 1333/1600 fsb (only the fastest quad cores run on a 1600 mhz fsb by default), so for a reliable overclock we want to look for a penryn that comes with a default fsb that is slower than 1333 mhz, which a 1066 mhz fsb. we also want to pick a motherboard that supports 1066/1333/1600 fsb speeds, so that we are not running either cpu or motherboard out of it's basic design capabilities.

in the case of the E7400, it runs on a 1066 mhz fsb and uses a 10.5 multiplier, so it's perfect, i simply popped the cpu in, when into the bios, set the fsb to 1333 and viola! i was up and running at 3.5ghz with no fuss or muss and it's stable as they come.

so how does this setup perform? i'm glad you asked, i took the liberty of running a few encoding benchmarks and here are the results:

the source file was a 1.4ghz, 20 mb/s, 9 min 16 sec, mpeg-2, 1920x1080i, demo from pioneer that i had found online a while ago, resized to 1280x720

for the encoding apps i used avidemux and tmpgenc express v4.6.3.268, first up avidemux:

phenom 9500, loading the source file (indexing the mpeg-2): 25 sec

E7400, loading the source file (indexing the mpeg-2): 15 sec

phenom 9500, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 4 threads: 13 fps, 19 min

phenom 9500, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 6 threads: 15 fps, 18 min

phenom 9500, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 8 threads: 15 fps, 18 min

phenom 9500, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 4 threads: 12 fps, 22 min

phenom 9500, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 6 threads: 10 fps, 25 min

phenom 9500, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 8 threads: 10 fps, 25 min

E7400, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 2 threads: 14 fps, 18 min

E7400, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 4 threads: 18 fps, 15 min

E7400, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 6 threads: 18 fps, 15 min

E7400, x264 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 8 threads: 18 fps, 15 min

E7400, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 2 threads: 21 fps, 12 min

E7400, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 4 threads: 21 fps, 12 min

E7400, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 6 threads: 21 fps, 12 min

E7400, xvid 3000 kps, aac 128 kps, 8 threads: 21 fps, 12 min

next up tmpgenc express:

phenom 9500, divx, 3 mb/s, insane settings, mp3, 128 kps: 37 min

E7400, divx, 3 mb/s, insane settings, mp3, 128 kps: 25 min

phenom 9500, avc, 3 mb/s, aac, 128 kps: 26 min

E7400, avc, 3 mb/s, aac, 128 kps: 27 min

phenom 9500, vc1, 3 mb/s, wma 10 pro, 128 kps, all quality settings at max: 1hr 55min

E7400, vc1, 3 mb/s, wma 10 pro, 128 kps, all quality settings at max: 1hr 35min

phenom 9500, mpeg-2, 3 mb/s, ac3, 128 kps: 15 min

E7400, mpeg-2, 3 mb/s, ac3, 128 kps: 10 min

as you can see, under everything except main concepts h264 encoder (the avc encoder tmpg uses) the E7400 is faster than the phenom 9500, in some cases by quite a bit. main concept's encoder seems to really like amd cpu's as i have seen benchmarks where a X4 810 actually smoked an i7 920, though with main concept reference things go back to where one would expect them. also keep in mind that the source is only 9 min 16 sec, so extrapolating the above results to a 90 minute movie the difference between the 9500 and the 7400 is quite a bit.

all in all i am very happy with the E7400, as even in everyday use it feels snappier, more responsive than the 9500, and as soon as the 9550s comes down in price, and it will, i think i'll big up one of those bad boys and couple it with a 1600mhz fsb for a really smoking low power quad core.

[budz]

I've done builds with the Gigabyte G31M-ES2L with being able to overclock a E2160 cpu to 3.00ghz and also GSkill ddr2-800 ram to 1066mhz. It's a great little mobo. I'm debating to pick one up for myself to replace a Gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo that has the dreaded cold boot problem. Or I may just pickup another Gigabyte UD3P mobo.

[deadrats]

I've done builds with the Gigabyte G31M-ES2L with being able to overclock a E2160 cpu to 3.00ghz and also GSkill ddr2-800 ram to 1066mhz. It's a great little mobo. I'm debating to pick one up for myself to replace a Gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo that has the dreaded cold boot problem. Or I may just pickup another Gigabyte UD3P mobo.

those UD3P boards are sweet but they do cost twice as much as the G31M-ES2L and in all honesty the G31M-ES2L is such a nice little board that even if you are planning on using a higher end quad core i still can't see spending the extra dough, i would just spend the extra 60 or so bucks on a faster cpu, unless you need support for more than 4 gigs of ram or are planning on overclocking to greater than 1600 mhz levels.