Spring IDF 2006 Conroe Preview: Intel Regains the Performance Crown
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 7, 2006 3:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Gaming Performance
The one area where AMD has been the clear leader for years has been in gaming performance - Conroe changes everything.
Updated: In Don MacDonald's keynote he also provided us with another reference point for Conroe's performance, this time under Call of Duty 2. We have no idea what settings they ran at but the results we saw were Conroe at 111 fps and a Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73GHz scoring 90 fps. But the most interesting gaming tests are below:
First off we've got Quake 4 running the 1.0.5.0 patch at 1280 x 1024 with High Quality settings. The only demo available was Intel's own demo but nothing looked out of the ordinary with the recording. We tested with both r_useSMP enabled and disabled, first the SMP disabled numbers. Updated: The Quake 4 scores have been updated as mentioned in our follow-up article.
With SMP disabled, Conroe holds a 25% performance advantage over the 2.8GHz Athlon 64 X2. Enabling SMP provides a similar 24% performance advantage.
Next up is a Half Life 2 Lost Coast demo, once more an Intel supplied demo but there's only so much you can do to a demo recording to make it favor one CPU maker over another:
Conroe's performance advantage extends to 31% under Half Life 2, talk about a complete role reversal here.
We finish off this page with Unreal Tournament 2004 and a 20% performance advantage for Conroe.
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raskren - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
The AMDroid are really reaching now...Sh0ckwave - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
You have no idea what your talking about. I have just checked two Nforce 4 Athlon 64 systems, and guess what, they all have "AwardBIOS v6.00PG" The BIOS version is at the bottom of the POST page, not at the top - its not in that screenshot. So you dont know what bios version it was running.gersson - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Holy Crap -- why??? Muslim extremist??? O_o5150Joker - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I won't support their chips because they use strong arm tactics to keep out the competition and secondly because their R&D facility is in Israel and I refuse to support anything that comes out of that place.ATC - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Actually, Intel has plans for a large facility to open in the Gaza strip to help out the Palestinians. It is a very nobel move by Intel. Good on them.JumpingJack - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
And I agree with the agree'ers :) .... this was not only inappropriate, but majorly inaccurate. Intel has R&D in several locations, the design originated in Israel, but the chips on display were developed/manufactured and produced at Intel's largest (main) R&D site in Oregon.JackPack - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
You can tell from the codename which is designed where.Only Conroe was designed State side. The Core architecture, and Merom is clearly Israeli.
JackPack - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Forgot to add: 5150Joker's comment is despicable.dali71 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Take your anti-semitic rant somewhere else, jackass. Aren't you late for your Klan rally?Sunrise089 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I agree with dali71, and it's wonderful to see 5150Joker someone using such neutral and kind language as "that place". Of course I'm sure each and every Intel employee in Israel is personally responsible for all of the region's problems, and are not simply men and women trying to do the best they can earning a living in a dangerous situation, right 5150Joker?