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
Intel is very excited about its new Core architecture, especially with Conroe on the desktop. It's not really news to anyone that Intel hasn't had the desktop performance crown for years now; its Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors run hotter and offer competitive or lower performance than their AMD competitors. With Conroe, Intel hopes to change all of that.
From top to bottom - Quad-core 65nm Kentsfield, dual core 65nm Conroe and 65nm Pentium D
Intel setup two identical systems: in one corner, an Athlon 64 FX-60 overclocked to 2.8GHz running on a DFI RD480 motherboard. And in the other corner, a Conroe running at 2.66GHz (1067MHz FSB) on an Intel 975X motherboard.
The AMD system used 1GB of DDR400 running at 2-2-2/1T timings, while the Intel system used 1GB of DDR2-667 running at 4-4-4. Both systems had a pair of Radeon X1900 XTs running in CrossFire and as far as we could tell, the drivers and the rest of the system setup was identical. They had a handful of benchmarks preloaded that we ran ourselves, the results of those benchmarks are on the following pages. Tomorrow we'll be able to go into great depth on the architecture of Conroe, but for now enjoy the benchmarks.
As far as we could tell, there was nothing fishy going on with the benchmarks or the install. Both systems were clean and used the latest versions of all of the drivers (the ATI graphics driver was modified to recognize the Conroe CPU but that driver was loaded on both AMD and Intel systems).
Intel told us to expect an average performance advantage of around 20% across all benchmarks, some will obviously be higher and some will be lower. Honestly it doesn't make sense for Intel to rig anything here since we'll be able to test it ourselves in a handful of months. We won't say it's impossible as anything can happen, but we couldn't find anything suspicious about the setups.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
220 Comments
View All Comments
Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Why?Here's the part you're not getting - this is an entirely new generation of CPU. Think of when AMD when from K7 to K8 - they had significant performace increases. If AMD could do it, I would expect that with the resources Intel has available, they could do it also.
Justin Case - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Actually, the first K8s were slower than the high-end K7s. Just at the first P4s were slower than the top PIIIs, and so on. Every new generation is introduced at a speed slightly below the previous one. I suspect independent benchmarks of real, shipping CPUs will show a similar story. This is marketing, people, what did you expect Intel to show? Benchmarks where they lose?Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Nice try.Please detail for us how a shipping CPU could be around half the speed of the one Anand just tested himself.
bob661 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Hell! Show me a shipping Conroe?JackPack - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
LOL. It's now down to these bottom-of-the-barrel arguments.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Don't expect better from bobby-boy. He can't handle the fact that Intel could recover from past missteps.bob661 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
They weren't running Anand's benchmarks!!!!!! Like the other poster said, why in the hell would Intel show themselves in an unfavorable light? And where are the other benchmarks?Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
As Anand said himself (you did read the article, right?) there's only so much that could be done. You're not going to get 40, 50 percent improvemnts tweaking a game.I'm loving watching the AMD fanboys blowing an artery!
formulav8 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
What is it with you? You call everyone else a fanboy when YOU are the absolute worst of them all. Get a life and actually add some good to the community for once. No wonder almost ALL of your replys are -1's. Because you add NOTHING for the better. Its always a stupid fanboy reply. I can't understand you fanboys in the least. You are one of the many fanboys that should be banned from posting. Please add something good for once.Jason
Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Okay, here's something good; I do sincerely hope you will take the advice.You are the one that should look into getting a life if some anonymous person on the internet has this kind of an effect on you. If anything I write causes you any emotional response other than the occasional smile, then I really think you should go out with your friends and get some stress relief in the real world.