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
Final Words
While we're still comparing to Socket-939 and only using RD480, it does seem very unlikely that AMD would be able to make up this much of a deficit with Socket-AM2 and RD580. With Conroe's performance advantage averaging over 20% it looks like Intel's confidence has been well placed.
Also keep in mind that we are over six months away from the actual launch of Conroe, performance can go up from where it is today. We also only looked at the 2.66GHz part, the Extreme Edition version of Conroe will most likely be clocked around 3.0GHz which will extend the performance advantage even further.
AMD still does have some time to surprise us with AM2, but from what we've seen today, they are going to have to do a lot of work to close this gap. We saw performance today in the two areas that we were most concerned about with Conroe: gaming and media encoding, and in both Intel greatly exceeded our expectations. Also remember that Conroe should be lower power than the AMD offering we compared it to, although we weren't able to measure power consumption at the wall in our brief time with the systems.
Going into IDF we expected to see a good showing from Conroe, but leaving IDF, well, now we just can't wait to have it.
More from the show as we get it...
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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.