In the review, we compare it against the Core 2 Duo E6750, which it essentially replaces for the same price, as well as AMD's current top dual-core, the Athlon 64 X2 6400+. Finally, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 is included, since it has dropped in price to the point where it is just about the same as the E8500. What's better, a pair of newer, faster cores, or four slower cores based on slightly older architecture? Read on to find out!

We also push this CPU to its air-cooled limits in order to see how far it will overclock. The results were pretty surprizing to say the least!