Intel Pentium Dual-Core microprocessor

Picture: xcarlos

Traditionally, the Pentium brand has always been associated with high-performance desktop processors. Starting from the Pentium Dual-Core family, the brand was "downgraded" to medium-performance and medium-priced processors. During its introduction, in May 2007, the family was positioned between Core 2 Duo family and single-core Celeron 400 series family. First two members of family were E2140 and E2160. Both processors had 1 MB level 2 cache - 2 or 4 times smaller than the level 2 cache on Core 2 Duo processors, but 2 times larger than the L2 cache on Celeron 400 series CPUs. Processor's frequency and Front Side Bus frequency was comparable to those frequencies of Celeron 4xx and the slowest Core 2 Duo processors.

Pentium Dual-Core E2160 is very similar to the slowest member of Core 2 Duo family, Core 2 Duo E4300 CPU. Both processors run at the same core and FSB frequency, have the same size of level 1 caches, and include pretty much the same core features. The only difference between them is the size of level 2 cache - 1 MB for the E2160, as opposed to 2 MB for the E4300. Having smaller L2 cache, the E2160 is up to 20% slower in memory intensive applications, including games, but performs at the same level in CPU intensive applications (3D rendering, encoding, and others).