The chaps over at HardwareSecrets have posted a round-up review comparing the performance of Core 2 Duo E8400, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Phenom X3 8750 and Phenom X4 9550. Which one is the fastest USD 200 CPU?

On VirtualDub Core 2 Duo E8400 was clearly the fastest CPU due to its SSE4 instruction set, which is recognized by DivX encoder (you have to manually enable it to use SSE4, though). This CPU was 31.03% faster than Core 2 Quad Q6600, 36.50% faster than Phenom X4 9550 and 38.16% faster than Phenom X3 8750.

Except on a very few occasions (3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage CPU tests and on Cinebench) we haven't see AMD CPU's being faster than Intel's during our tests. We don't see why someone would by a Phenom CPU while you can buy a faster CPU from Intel for absolutely the same price.

If you are looking for a CPU on the USD 200 range you have only two real options: the new Core 2 Duo E8400 and Core 2 Quad Q6600. For the mainstream user Core 2 Duo E8400 is the best option, as it provides a higher performance under almost all scenarios and you also get SSE4.1 support, which improves performance a lot if you have an SSE4-capable application. Core 2 Quad Q6600 is a better option if you have a specific application that is able to recognize more than two cores, like rendering. If you aren't a professional designer dealing with 3D modeling, stick with Core 2 Duo E8400.