Conroe Performance Preview Follow-Up
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2006 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The BIOS Issue
The one item that a number of you pointed out was that the BIOS used on the DFI LANPARTY UT RDX200 (RD480) motherboard was in fact the first version released for this particular motherboard. Intel told us that the motherboard was purchased a little over two weeks ago and the BIOS used on it was what came with the motherboard, but we still agreed with you all that the system should be tested with the latest BIOS to remove all doubt of wrong doing.
There are only two BIOS files publicly available for this motherboard, one being the first release that was loaded on the system and the other being a file dated 12/23/2005. The 12/23 BIOS offers the following fixes according to DFI:
1. Fix memory Set 2-1-1-1-1 and 4-1-1 mode wrong.
2. Set Cool'n'Quiet default disable.
3. Change the description of DQDRV.
4. Fix Read Preamble Table Error.
5. Shorten the delay time during clock programming loop.
6. Add over clocks step by step.
7. Fix fill 3114 SVID&SSID under Cross fire mode.
8. Fix soft-reset hang on POST code F2h if enable USB mouse support.
9. Change CMOS used to fix some control item can’t save.
10. Add support K8 FX60 CPU.
11. Update SiI3112 Raid ROM.
12. Fix some SATA(DiamondMax 10 (6B160M0) HDD ) HDD detect fail at first time cool boot.
That’s a pretty long list of changes, which could definitely be responsible for a change in performance. We were able to test the impact of the new BIOS, and our results are below:
DFI LANPARTY UT RDX200 |
10/11/2005 BIOS |
12/23/2005 BIOS |
| Quake 4 - 1280 x 960 (Avg Frame Rate) | 207.5 fps |
207.6 fps |
| F.E.A.R. - 1024 x 768 (Avg Frame Rate) | 151.0 fps |
158.0 fps |
| Windows Media Encoder 9 (Encode Time) | 75 seconds |
75 seconds |
| DivX 6.1 (Encode Time) | 44 seconds |
44 seconds |
| iTunes 6.0.1.3 (Encode Time) | 73 seconds |
72 seconds |
UT2004 and Half Life 2 were absent from our testing, simply because we didn’t have the time to get them installed, but the rest of the scores here should be indicative of the full impact of the BIOS update. In the media encoding tests we saw absolutely no performance impact other than a 1 second reduction in iTunes encoding time. F.E.AR. at 1024 x 768 saw a reasonable gain of 4%. Quake 4 remained virtually unchanged.
With the new BIOS installed we confirmed that Cool’n’Quiet was disabled, so that was not impacting the performance results at all. The new BIOS also correctly identified the Athlon 64 FX-60 processor, although as you can see from the results above, the proper detection of the CPU didn’t translate into greater performance.
The new BIOS in action
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RichUK - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Good read good read. Thanks for the honesty and accuracy on the updates.MrKaz - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Intel road map says Q4. Not Q3.And 6 months from now is Q4 not Q3.
AMD new K8 will boast performance by 10%. If .65nm boost the frequency of new K8 since .13 » .09 doesn’t seem to do pretty much on that aspect.
Then we will have some good war.
Don’t forget that this processor when working in single core have a huge L2 (4MB) vs the only 1MB from AMD. That boost the performance a lot in many applications. So the difference in Quake4, ... is amazing but not that much.
MrKaz - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Sorry i mean that 6 months from now is still Q3, but intel road map says Q4.Von Matrices - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Didn't that CPU have 2MB L2 and not 4MB L2?Anemone - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
If 20% improvement on Athlon the P4 is officially last, last, last years news, and a dog./bye P4
Anemone - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
You are really top rate reviewers. Check and recheck, and always forthright about things that needed correcting. Kudos!PrinceGaz - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Thanks for this follow-up article, it covers pretty much every question that was raised except one. In the original article you mention "the ATI graphics driver was modified to recognize the Conroe CPU but that driver was loaded on both AMD and Intel systems". Have you any information on why it needed modifying and what was changed, and whether the changes would have any effect on the AMD system (either positive or negative).Chadder007 - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
I think its because they needed to change the drivers to recognize the dual core capabilities of the Conroe, since they are multithreaded capable now from ATI.redbone75 - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
One thing I haven't really noticed many people talking about in all of this Conroe stuff is the price to performance ratio Conroe brings. If it were released now, Conroe would offer a significant increase in performance over AMD's top offering at half the price ($540? for Conroe 2.66 and $1000+ for an FX60 right now). Sure, AMD will reduce the prices of it's processors once Intel launches the Core line and AM2 is ramping up, but I doubt it will be significant enough to entice unbiased buyers away from Conroe if it is the superior performing chip. I personally have favored Intel's chips over AMD's simply because I'm not a heavy gamer and didn't need the insane frame rates, and before dual core chips arrived I've always found my computing experience to be a little smoother b/c of hyperthreading (I've built several AMD systems for clients and friends). With the advent of dual core chips, I was eventually going to build a new system around an X2, but then when looking at the great overclockability of the Presler core and the lower price I kinda balked at that switch. Maybe others will do the same with AMD vs. Conroe: AMD might lower their prices such that buyers will go for it and simply overclock to close the performance deficit. But, then again we did just see an overclocked FX60 get bested by Conroe, at least according to current data (had to throw that in there lest the might of the fanboys smote me where I sit). Oh, well, I could be wrong, but that's my human right:-)dysonlu - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
Intel will charge a premium for it. You can mark my word. It's simply naive to expect the new chip to offer both the best performance AND the best value.Boy, people can so easily get carried away, being too optimistic and enthusiastic.