Intel's "Penryn" core has already launched and is divided into two segments on the desktop side- the Yorkfield is a quad core architecture with 2x6MB cache while the Wolfdale is its dual core sibling featuring a dual core architecture and a 6MB L2 cache shared between the two cores. We've already looked at the high-end Yorkfield based Quad Core QX9650 CPU running at 3.0GHz.

Today, we take a look at the lower end of the Penryn family- the E6450 running at 1333MHz FSB with a multiplier of 7x to yeild 2.33GHz. While we dont have the exact pricing on this part, we expect it to retail around the US$140 mark.

Basically, all we're doing in this article is comparing the E6450 to the E6550 which is esentially the same CPU with the older Conroe core- so its 2.33GHz (7 x 1333) with 4MB shared L2 cache and based on the 65nm process. Lets kick things off by introducing the testbed.