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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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Yep. Provided that there's no cheating going on here, then gratz to Intel. I'm not a fanboi of either camp, so may the best chip win!BrownTown - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
is there a catach ehre that I'm not seeing or something?, just can't believe that a new processor could spank the old generation that bad in gaming.Lifted - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
The catch is my next CPU will be an Intel. It was nice knowing you AMD.Patrese - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Any news about the price of this thing? If it is priced properly, I mean, if it is not 40% more money for 20% more performance, then I'd say WOW. If it is about the same prices we have today, then it'd be some massive kick on AMD a**...Doormat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Prices were posted at DailyTech a few weeks ago - the 2.67Ghz chip is $540, the 2.4 is $300 or so.Furen - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
4 speed grades will be offered at launch so I'm sure there will be something that is priced low enough for most of us. I wonder how much of a performance hit the 2MB L2 parts will have, though, since I was those will be the more affordable ones.brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
there's gotta be some catch, right?Intel even overclocked the competition... that's quite admirable.
brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
spankBrassbud - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I don't know why anyone is finding this surprising. Haven't you all seen OCed Pentium M benchmarks? In many tasks a Pentium M is 10-20% faster than a comparably clocked A64. So now that we basicly have an optimized, die shunk Pentium M on the desktop that runs at comparable clock speeds to an A64, why is anyone surprised that performance is ~20% better on average?Yes, the performance is impressive. Yes, its disappointing in some ways to see Intel on top given all the success of the underdog AMD lately. But no, I am not surprised in anyway by these results. Perhaps there are inequalities in the benchmarks, perhaps not, but anyone who didn't see this coming wasn't being realistic.
stupid - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Actually, it is not at all surprising given the fact that Socket AM2 is merely a socket change for the moment. Other than DDR2 support, virtualization, and some other things that I don't know about, AMD officially announced that there will not be much initial performance gains. Hence the fact that with the exception of the Athlon 64 5000+, all releases of the AM2 CPU will match the speeds of the S939 Athlons.There probably will not be any increases in speeds until AMD switches over to the 65nm process. While it is disappointing that AMD is not releasing a next generation CPU to compete with Intel this year, this is a transistional year for AMD. While it is possible to release a 65nm next generation CPU in a new socket, it is also prone to become a potential bust if the process does not go smoothly. Using the 65nm process and Socket AM2 on a current product is a smart move because it is already a stable product so less can go wrong.
A company can't always be on top of their game. It's always a leap frog race where the competition is always trying to get ahead of the other. Look at what's going on between ATI and nVidia, granted GPUs do have shorter product cycles than CPUs. Anyone, who expects AMD to remain on top of Intel and release new products at the same time does not truly understand the concept of competition in conjunction with research and developement.