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.
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.