Let's hear what Mike 'Monster' Harris has to say about this own personal experiences with Intel's latest and greatest generation of CPU's which are claimed by Intel to be the 'Biggest change in transistor technology for 40 years".

The much hyped release of Intels flagship processor the QX9650 late last year has wet the lips of many an enthusiast waiting for the more affordable CPU's in Intels new range to arrive. Will the recent Wolfdale CPU range leave AMD hiding in their burrows? Or is Intel marketing crying wolf?

With the recent release of Intel’s new ‘Wolfdale” core CPU’s and the unsurprising initial supply problems most people have probably been finding it difficult to get their hands on one unless they are prepared to pay for pre-order and subject themselves to certain e-tailer price gouging.

Current Wolfdale range, specifications & approximate prices:
E8200 (2.66 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 8x Multi) - £115
E8400 (3.0 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 9x Multi) - £140
E8500 (3.16 GHz – 1333 MHz FSB – 9.5x Multi) - £190

Those lucky enough to get their hands on one have been reporting some mixed results. It seems that some Wolfdale CPU’s have been shipped with faulty temperature sensors, so if you see Coretemp reporting 48deg idle temperatures don’t be surprised!

VID has also been in question relating directly to the potential clocking ability of all Intel CPU’s and the lowest I have seen with the Wolfdale generation is 0.0875v. More common will be around 1.05 – 1.15v and although these are an indication of clocking ability they can also be misleading. Just because the VID is lower doesn’t mean it will clock better, the VID of my 8400 is far higher but is a far better clocker and much more stable than the E8500.

Having tested and benchmarked both the E8400 & E8500 and have very mixed feelings about them, while being reasonably overclockable and far superior to the Conroe generation for benchmarking they have shown signs of instability. Even with my Asus P5K-Premium motherboard flashed to the latest bios I have seen numerous worrying stability issues with general everyday useage.

The E8500 has a faulty temp sensor and reports 48 degree idle temps (at stock speeds & volts) in Coretemp. It passed 12hours Prime 95 stability test @ 4.2 GHz only to crash randomly while playing games, running 3dMark, surfing the internet or even boot into Vista! The 8400 temp sensor was fine and Coretemp reported 31 degree idle temps (at stock speeds & volts) although I also experienced similar stability issues, booting at a certain speed one minute then refusing to the next. One point others may find useful is that I managed to get the E8400 completely stable @ 4.5 GHz by setting both the voltage (GTL) reference settings within bios to x61. This setting seemed to iron out all the instability issues and it then ran every benchmark and even passed a short 2 hour Prime 95 run.

Other issues I made a note of while playing around with bios settings to enhance stability were voltages, it is worthwhile taking into account that both of these CPU’s seemed to want 1.5vcore before they really started to clock well but at the same time neither of them liked being given 1.65vcore or more. The E8500 was also tested under cascade but unfortunately would not boot due to a cold bug.

Continued...