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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IHYLN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I stopped reading when I saw that the FX-60 rig couldn't even detect the FX-60. Like what a previous poster brought up something is definitely fishy. FEAR at that resolution is GPU limited so I can't understand how the cpu ALONE could make such a huge difference. This simply doesn't make sense. Obviously Anand doesn't know a CPU from a stick in the mud. I wouldn't even have published this nonsense after seeing that.brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
could it be it wasn't recognized since it was overclocked?IHYLN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
since when do you overclock a CPU and the motherboard doesn't recognize what processor class it is afterwards? Right...brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
all the screenshot says is 'model unknown'...i'm pretty sure that's what my athlon xp says with a small overclock,
since it's not running at an official model clock anymore, it doesn't know what to report.
IHYLN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I've had 2 s939 boards, a K8N NEO2 Platinum and a DFI UT Lanparty SLI-DR. Both ran my FX-55 which is overclocked to 2.8ghz and both recognize what CPU class it is regardless if it runs at stock or overclocked. I'm not buying that excuse and neither is anyone else.JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I've got several boards (including the DFI Lanparty RDX200) that report "AMD Athlon Model Unknown" on any overclocked CPU. I mean, go ahead with the conspiracies if you really want to, but what point would it really serve to blatantly lie (either by us, Intel, both, etc.)? If we do it, we lose credibility. If Intel does it, we'll have the truth before launch anyway.Occam's Razor: Intel is damn happy with their performance, and they want to brag about it. I would if I were in their position. We're 4-6 months from launch, so there's not a whole lot AMD or anyone can do to immediately counter.
As I said earlier, who seriously thinks that Intel set out to match or come close to Athlon 64/X2 performance when they started architecting Core? [Intel: "You know, AMD is currently faster than us. Let's throw a lot of money at the problem and see if we can close the gap a bit...."]
clnee55 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
AMD fan boys would think so.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
You don't need to buy any excude. You disqaulified yourself from having any meaningful input when you said FEAR is GPU limited at 12x10 on a x1900 crossfire setup.IHYLN - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
my mistake, I missed the crossfire note.photoguy99 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
These results (if validated) are simply amazing on so many levels - forget the fact that this processor is not released for months - It will take AMD *years* to catch up.- The sheer amount of percentage increase has rarely been this large over the previous records with the introduction of any CPU (new architecture or not). In fact how many times has there been a jump this large in the last 10 years?
- They did it at a lower clock speed. Devastating because AMD just doesn't have the headroom to out scale them on frequency.
- They did it at lower power consumption. Again, very difficult to counter.
- AM2 will probably not even provide a 10% boost. The tabloids are reporting initial samples were actually *slower* than socket 939.
- Even if AMD has a new architecture out in 6 months to a year, it will be hard gain back that much performance per clock.
- This spanking only required a 2.66Mhz CPU! And my god the Conroe EE will run at 3Ghz? Good luck competing with that.
- Price to manufacture has always been in Intel's favor because they are ahead on the process curve. So not only will they lead in performance, they can cut the profit legs totally out from under AMD because Conroe is cheap to manufacture on 65nm, and it will only get worse with 45nm.
Not only am I not an Intel fan boi, I'm writing this on an FX-60 clocked at 3Ghz which I paid a lot of money for thinking it would be one of the fastest systems around for a year. Looks like I won't even be close.