Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 - Core 2 Duo Allendale Dual-Core 1.8 GHz LGA 775 65W Processor - BX80557E4300

Pros: Excellent performance, great price. This is ideal for overclocking because of the lower FSB. Coupled it with an ASRock PT880Dual-VSTA motherboard and got 2.7ghz by raising FSB to 300mhz (limit of that board) - stock voltage. Don't compare with clock speed of AMD chips, this is a lot faster at the same clock speed - check benchmarks. Also faster than a P4 at the same speed (each core is faster, let alone both together).

Cons: None at all.

Overall Review: NOTE: If you upgrade a Windows XP installation from single to dual core processor, it may not recognize and use your second core properly. Normally this is done in the device manager by "updating driver" for the ACPI processor. If that doesn't offer a multiprocessor option, re-install XP or find out which files to replace in windows/system32 (do it in safe mode and read more about this first - be careful - the replacements can probably be found in windows/ServicePackFiles/i386: halmacpi.dll to hal.dll, ntkrpamp.exe to ntkrnlpa.exe, ntkrnlmp.exe to ntoskrnl.exe). There is also a hotfix on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256 that you will want for multiprocessor on XP no matter what (install hotfix *after* you get dual core working). If the task manager doesn't have two side-by-side graphs for CPU use, you are almost certainly *not* using both cores, whether or not they show up in the device manager! XP Home *does* support a dual-core CPU - make sure you are actually using it.

Pros: Decent performance with overclock.

Cons: Can only get mine to OC to 2.53GHz stable with stock cooling. The stock fan is very loud. Looks like I got a bad one.

Overall Review: I would rather have an e6300 or e6600. mboard is an asus p5n-e sli. Heat is not the issue, even with higher voltages the cpu is just not stable enough and it would most likely burn out quick as max rated voltage is 2.35 v.