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.
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Briggsy - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I'd say the evidence is enough to support 'Wait For Release and Reviews' rather than 'Bah, sod Intel' which has been the path for upgrading the past couple of years because Intel's been lost in the wilderness. However right now Conroe looks like a beast!AMD might gain at high clock speeds with DDR2-800, for applications where memory bandwidth is beneficial, especially if multithreaded.
When Anandtech reviews dual-core, it'd be interesting if they did scaling tests to see if DDR2 helps the X2 at high speeds compared with DDR1.
Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
As I said to you alter ego Griswold in another thread.Go ahead and tell me AMD is launching another architecture this year. Say K9 is shipping.
Please make yourself appear as foolish as Grissy.
Griswold - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
You sure sound like you get a free conroe soon. Doesnt take idiots like you to convince me that Intel could very well be the better choice very soon. It's previews like this that does the trick not your fanboi comments that we had to read even before anyone had any clues as to what Intel may come up with.Doormat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
K8L could ship this year. It wouldnt surprise me to see AMD push the K8L out to all segments intead of just the server segment if they are in fact that far behind Intel's Conroe on the desktop.Falloutboy - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
looks like intel put a bit more into conroe than just making a faster Pentuim M, hopefully AMD has something up there sleeves to combat this. Had a feeling intel wouldn't sit back another generation. but one thing to keep in mind is the 2.8ghz part was only running with ddr400 I'm woundering what the performance picture would look like with that A64 running the ram at ddr600 type speeds.vijay333 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
dammit, there goes my well-laid plans for upgrading my system. come on amd, don't make us pay for over-priced intel chips again :)code65536 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Don't forget, the Pentium D is currently cheaper than the X2, so AMD is not necessarily cheaper.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Now that's impressive.Griswald won't have much to to say in this thread.
Griswold - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Oh yes I do, I'll still give you a warm fuck you, because you're a fanboy and meanwhile I have no problem to admit that I will buy an intel based machine when my next upgrade is due in 2007 - if AMD doesnt have anything better.Questar - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Impressive use of language there. You're really showing off your level of education.