Strengths: Good overclocking, value

Weaknesses: Need better than stock heatsink to overclock

Summary: I have this running on my MSI mobo overclocked to 3.2Ghz using a Zalman 9500 and crucial ballistix without problems. It may not be the fastest or highest overclocker, but for video editing and other mutitasking this processor can't be beat for the speed/price.

Strengths: Great price to value ratio! Well, its a C2D, so you know it performs excellently. I have it paired with a Gigabyte DS3 board and 2gb of GSkill ram and it works well so far.

Weaknesses: Careful when installing the cooler. I felt like I was going to break the motherboard in half when I was pushing the pins in.

Summary: Pushing the locking mechanism and the latch down is really scary at first, it really takes a good amount of pressure to get it down, I thought I might've broke mine but it's fine. just make sure you align the triangle on the corner correctly and you'll have it up and running!

Strengths: Good out of box performance. Exceptional overclocking ability. BSEL mod for cheap performance on some non-overclocking motherboards. Relatively low heat processor.

Weaknesses: 2mb of cache vs. the 4mb of the 6 series. Need a motherboard dedicated to over clocking to get the most out of this chip. Batch to batch variation on how high it can be overclocked.

Summary: This chip is phenomenal. I have mine overclocked to 2.8ghz easily on stock voltage (8x multiplier, 333FSB) using some cheap DDR2 ram I purchased. Using an asus P5N32-SLI Plus for a motherboard. I would recommend researching the motherboard extensively, some motherboards will take a "BSEL" pin mod which will make over clocking much easier on an inexpensive motherboard (it fools the system into believing that the front side bus speed is much higher). Contrary to belief, fast ram is NOT wasted with this chip. Try stepping down the FSB multiplier if you have fast ram, the chip will run the same speed but much cooler. If you start to increase the voltage to the chip (vcore greater than 1.325V) to make it stable you will likely need a better heatsink than the retail one provided.

Strengths: fast speed,duo core,easy overlock

Weaknesses: should come with a better cpu fan

Summary: I have bought for over 1 month , it's easy install and setup,and it runs fast and stably , I haven't overlock yet because it's already fast enough, if you use you PC for browsing internet and watching movie and playing mid-level games, I strongly suggest you to choose E4300.

Strengths: highly overclockable

Weaknesses: none

Summary: The E4300 is a great CPU for overclockers. With the stock heat sink / fan, I can get 3GHz (333MHz * 9) with only 1.35V vCore. It's multiplier is 9 (vs. E6300's 8) so you don't have to use super high FSB for overclocking. Generally speaking, Core 2 Dual is awesome. You may already know, 1MHz in C2D is not the same as 1MHz in, say, P4. A 3GHz C2D beats 3GHz P4 by a great margin, while generating less heat. Also, as a bonus, Vista is more efficient utilizing C2D than XP.

Strengths: Easy to overclock, even for novices. Potential performance of chips that cost twice as much. Stock heatsink isn't bad.

Weaknesses: If you're not going to overclock, there are better values to be had.

Summary: Grab a cheap motherboard and see what you can do with the best overclocking chip in years. Also consider the E4400, which has a higher multiplier which may give higher speeds on non-enthusiast motherboards.

Strengths: Price, overclockable, 9x multiplier

Weaknesses: Only 2mb cache, needs aftermarket hsf

Summary: With a good aftermarket hsf this processor can easily be overclocked to 3.0 GHz. The earlier produce chips overclocked better but it is the luck of the draw. You can get high overclocks with DDR2-800 memory and P965 boards due to the multiplier and fsb speed. There are a lot of resources for overclocking this chip. Price has now gone down to point that it can be fun to play around with.

Strengths: Cheap price, runs cool, overclocks well even with stock fan, excellent warranty, excellent for a cheap beginner computer, quiet fan

Weaknesses: 2MB cache , Quad is already here but still too expensive

Summary: I got this retail kit for $99 with a free ECS motherboard. It runs very quiet with the stock fan and overclocks easily. I will install tthe Arctic Cooler and hopefully could go to 3.4. Anyway, this CPU is best bang for the back right now among intel's chips. I will use this until the quad core's price goes down. Then I'll upgrade to the Q6600.

Strengths: VERY overclockable

Weaknesses: No virtualization, even though I don't need it.

Summary: I was able to get a 80% overclock out of this processor, going from 1.8GHz to 3.23GHz using a Gigabyte DS3 rev 1.3. With a price point of ~$113, there's no better processor to buy. There is no virtualization technology, but very few people will ever need it.

Strengths: Significant performance over P4-3Ghz with very cool temp

Weaknesses: slightly pricy

Summary: I have done a number of really challenging performance tests to see for myself what kind of performance boost Core2Duo has in comparison to P4 technology. Core2Duo is a flat out winner by a big margin. CPU Usage is 20-30 less than Pe, CPU temp is 30C lower!Tested running 1920x108 HDvideo simultaneously running a complex Flash media with a lot of dithering.

Strengths: Overclock capability

Weaknesses: none

Summary: with a gigabyte 965P-DS3 rev3.3 motherboard, it can reach 360FSB*9 without other changes. the stock fan is very quiet and is easy to install. overall i think it's the best performance /value core 2 duo family CPU so far.

Strengths: Great performance! Overclocks very well.

Weaknesses: None

Summary: I was able to overclock my e4300 to 3.0 ghz without changing the voltage. Been stable with orthos for 1 day now. Used stock cooling with arctic silver 5. Temperatures are around 35 C idle and 51 C load. Great chip! Highly recommended.

Strengths: Very overclockable, beats the heck out of AMD cpus currently, especially when overclocked.

Weaknesses: Only 2mb cache, stock heatsink not spectacular, no virtualization technology

Summary: The e4300 is the cheapest core 2 duo available weighing in at 1.8GHz stock, and is going to be phased out of production by Intel next quarter. However, its got incredible overclocking capability. It runs at a stock 9x multiplier (rather high) so you can overclock with a smaller FSB, meaning you won't need super fast expensive RAM or motherboard. Most e4300s will run 2.8 GHz right out of the box, and you can get 3.0 GHz and higher very often with better cooling and a little luck. Mine is running at 3.15 GHz without a hiccup. One negative is that it only 2mb cache, as opposed to 4mb in the better intel CPUs. Most benchmarks show this really doesn't make a big difference, however I hear that the extra 2 mb helps with decoding HD DVD. Also, I believe it lacks virtualization technology that the more expensive intel CPUs use, but most people don't need that right now.And the stock cooler isn't great, but I'm just being picky now. Its actually one of the best stock retail coolers I have ever used, but there are definitely better ones out there aftermarket. Take a look at the tuniq tower, thermalright ultra-120 extreme, or the scythe infinity.

Strengths: Overclocks like crazy

Weaknesses: 2MB of cache

Summary: So far I've built 3 systems using this processor. All of them overclocked to 2.8-3.2 using stock heatsink/fan and average memory (but a good mobo). This chip, when overclocked, is good at both paralel processing (because of true dual core) and linear processing such as audio/video conversion (thanks to the sheer speed). Don't push it too hard, though: your system components will deteriorate because of high voltage even if the temps aren't very hot.

Strengths: Low power consumption, High overclockability, Awesome performance

Weaknesses: Noisy stock heatsink/fan

Summary: As the youngest brother of the Core 2 Duo family, E4300 is the absoultely best choice you can make this day. Highly overclockable, low power consumption (About 40W even under maximum load -- equivalent to mainstream graphic card power consumption!), and superior performance. But you might also want to consider AMD's X2 for their low price. But if you consider the performance as a key feature, you should pick this up. There cannot be any substitution.