Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

Back in March we had looked at the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 mobile processor with its Penryn core and 6MB of shared L2 cache between its two cores clocked at 2.50GHz. We were very pleased with the performance of this mobile processor on Linux, which was found within a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, and today we are looking at the Penryn's desktop counterpart. Intel's Core 2 Duo "Wolfdale" E8000 series processors were released earlier this year with 6MB of L2 cache, 45nm manufacturing, a 1333MHz FSB, and support for SSE 4.1. The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12551

[M1AU]

Thanks for the test!

Now I'm looking for a good mainboard in the price class of about EUR 150 +/- EUR 50, which of course works and performs great on linux.

While we're at it 4GB of memory would also be nice and some sort of 80+ power supply.

Any suggestions?

[d2kx]

Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Deluxe (P45/ICH10R)
Memory: OCZ Platinum XTC Edition 2x2GB (PC2-8500U CL5-5-5-18)
CPU Cooler: Xigmatek HDT-S1284 (Achilles)
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II 430W or 500W

[M1AU]

Thanks d2kx, I will have a look at these!

Edit:
That cooler looks damn nice! I'll take it :-)

[ivanovic]

Uhm, why do you want to go with such an expensive mainboard? Do you need SLI/CrossFire? If you don't, just go with one of the cheaper boards. I am very happy with my Gigabyte P35-DS3R. When I bought it, it was at about 80€, the P45 version should be at about the same price. The board works really well under Linux, everything I tested is supported.
The successor of the board (GigaByte GA-EP45-DS3R) is available for ~110€, the "non-raid" edition for <100€. I don't see a real need to go for a motherboard that is almost 50€ more expensive.

[M1AU]

Uhm, why do you want to go with such an expensive mainboard? Do you need SLI/CrossFire? If you don't, just go with one of the cheaper boards. I am very happy with my Gigabyte P35-DS3R. When I bought it, it was at about 80€, the P45 version should be at about the same price. The board works really well under Linux, everything I tested is supported.
The successor of the board (GigaByte GA-EP45-DS3R) is available for ~110€, the "non-raid" edition for <100€. I don't see a real need to go for a motherboard that is almost 50€ more expensive.

Well, I made a few really bad experiences in the past with cheap ones.
But yes, a mainboard for approximately EUR 100 will normally also do it.

[rbmorse]

I've got a Gigabyte EP-35DS3R with an E8400 and 4GB of Corsair XMS2 (PC2-6400) running Ubuntu 8.04. Without at doubt it's the most solid, stable and reliable PC I've ever had.

Stock Intel CPU cooler works great...the E8400 runs about 40c with the fan turning a very quiet 1,200 RPM.

The only note I'd add is if you're using the stock cooler, mount it on the CPU/motherboard before you mount the motherboard in the case. That way you can visually confirm the pushpins are fully deployed and locked...they don't offer a lot of tactile feedback.

[sabriah]

Phoronix: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12551

I bought this nice CPU three weeks ago!

Good to hear it was a 10/10 choice!

Thanks for creating that test suite. It really is informative thanks to its wide selection of apps!

It was somewhat surprising that 2500 inserts in SQLite didn't gain that much. I guess it is hard drive bound. What would be more more CPU intensive? Sorting 100,000 records? Or perhaps find all duplicate records in a 100,000 record file? I've done that with 2,000,000 records using MySQL, but then it didn't fit the memory.

Great tests!

.

[M1AU]

About the cooler, yesterday a friend recommended me the Scythe NINJA series cooler and I guess I'm just going for a passive cooled setup.
With a few case fans (which I already have mounted), it should be possible without problems.

[Aphax]

I bought this CPU a month ago or so together with an Abit IP35 mainboard (running Gentoo Linux with kernel 2.6.25.4). Sadly I could never get it past 3.6GHz or it would run unstable. It seemed to be a problem with the FSB, since setting it to 410+ and using a low multiplier so the CPU itself ran at 3GHz or below would still leave it unstable, even after increasing vtt and mch voltages a little and playing with the GLT Ref. setting.

Anyway, 3.6GHz was of course still a decent overclock, and it is probably what I would have left it at anyway considering I didn't want to put too high of a voltage on it (for 3.6Ghz I only had to increase vcore from the default 1.225 to 1.265) or have to resort to extreme cooling. I have an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro on it at the moment which keeps it nicely cool (cores are ~42C under load, PWM around ~50C under load).

Unfortunately dispite being able to run Prime95 (yeah I know, on Windows.. I should find myself a decent Linux stress-tester) for 8 hours and passing 3 memtest86+ 2.01 passes I would get a sporadic lock up (once every few days or once a week). Even more depressing is that I still got this after reverting to standard settings.

A few days ago I finally found a way to reliably reproduce the lock up (still back on the stock 3GHz) when it happened to me when I was trying to compile Wine 1.1.0 through Gentoo's portage. On the console it gave me a Machine Check Exception (see http://pastebin.com/m10e2a503) which from googling for a bit tells me this really is a pure HW issue as the error suggests.

The really weird thing is that it absolutely only happens when I try to compile Wine (tested both 1.0 and 1.1.0), and always during the "make depend" command (which is actually done before the compiling) and always the same type of Machine Check Exception (sadly running the numbers through mcelog didn't give me anything useful), but not always at exactly the same directory in the source tree. I also couldn't reproduce the hang if I just compiled it by hand (not using portage) using the same ./configure arguments that portage uses and then running "make depend". Yet through portage it always does it.. I think I've tried over 20 times now. I've also done a full system upgrade recompiling things like Inkscape, Evolution, vlc, mplayer, and dozens of other packages without any problems whatsoever.

Anyway, after trying a ton of things like running newer (2.6.25.8) and older (2.6.24.x) kernels, disabled all unneeded kernel modules and not running X, underclocking the cpu+memory, increasing memory timings, swapping the memory, disconnecting all unneeded hardware, swapping the videocard, increasing voltages a tad (to see if it just needed more juice), updating to the latest BIOS (which explicitly added 45nm support), and a few more things I probably forgot, I finally managed to make it not crash after I swapped in a Q6600.

So all this seems to suggest either I borked my CPU, maybe by putting a too high voltage on it when I was trying to get it to 4GHz (never went over 1.3v vcore though) or it just doesn't work well with my mobo, or some odd CPU bug is being triggered. I'm not sure what to do now, the issue seems so specific I find it hard to justify cashing out for a new CPU... I guess next time I should run the CPU at defaults for at least a few weeks so that I know for sure it wasn't caused by my overclocking and I can still RMA it.

Oh well, apologies for the wall of text, this has been on my mind the last few days and when I read this article I just had to write it all down somewhere, and this seemed as good a place as any