Conroe Performance Preview Follow-Up
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2006 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The DDR2 Issue
As we mentioned earlier, the Conroe system was supposed to be running at 4-4-4-15 timings but was instead configured at 5-5-5-15, giving Conroe a bit of a disadvantage. We re-ran all of our tests with the timings correctly set to 4-4-4-15, the results are below:
Intel Conroe Platform |
5-5-5-15 |
4-4-4-15 |
| Quake 4 - 1280 x 960 (Avg Frame Rate) | 257.8 fps |
259.1 fps |
| F.E.A.R. - 1024 x 768 (Avg Frame Rate) | 186.0 fps |
189.0 fps |
| Windows Media Encoder 9 (Encode Time) | 66 seconds |
66 seconds |
| DivX 6.1 (Encode Time) | 31 seconds |
31 seconds |
| iTunes 6.0.1.3 (Encode Time) | 65 seconds |
65 seconds |
While the faster timings gave Intel a small performance boost in the games, it’s nothing to write home about.
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Zebo - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
No! read about Osborne effect. Essentially this is why new product demos like this, months ahead of schedule, are so rare and NDAs for all products exist.archcommus - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Well good for Intel for coming out with such a strong product, but I'll always have to go with the best bang for the buck, wonder if that'll still end up being AMD even if their parts are weaker across the board this time around.Just hope AMD stays in the game, we can't afford to have the little guy fall behind too much.
samuraiBX - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
I've been a diehard amd fan, but kudos to Intel for ramping up competitive products. I have only a couple of additions I'd like to see with the testing:1. I noticed that anandtech used the 2-2-2-5 T1 timings for the RD480 chipset. I remembered from an anandtech review that the best timings for this chipset is 2-2-2-7; not sure how much of a performance difference that would make, but I'd like to see the difference, however slight.
2. I know that this website's impression of the RD480 chipset wasn't stellar, and while I can understand if Intel couldn't purchase the RD580 chipset two weeks ago, I'd imagine it would have been possible to obtain this week, or at least borrow an RD580 board from ASUS; isn't ASUS a participant at IDF this year?
2. I understand that there was limited time, but I would also like to see how the conroe chip would do with 3d studio max. I'm looking to build a high end 3d animation workstation, and I'm looking at the performance leader, whether AMD or Intel.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
We did find 2-2-2-7 to provide the best bandwidth in our memory testing on the RD480 chipset, but the difference between 2-2-2-5 and 2-2-2-7 would be less than 1%, and certainly not significant.samuraiBX - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
As an addendum:I went to Bit-tech.net; the performance difference by Conroe is awesome! However, it was curious that on their F.E.A.R. benchmarks, the Intel overclocked FX-60 did worse than the reference FX-60.
Accord99 - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Different platform (NF4), different video card (single OC 7800GT). The bit-tech system may have been mored tweaked and perhaps there's some additional overhead in multi-GPU setups like Crossfire which causes reduced performance at extremely low resolutions.HurleyBird - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice that on the Intel Quake 4 timedemo performance *increased* for both processors but with Anand's timedemo performance *decreased*I wonder why that is?
IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
You mean on the SMP enabled and disabled benchmarks?? That's because on the page, while SMP disabled(SMP=0) is first on IDF Quake 4, SMP enabled(SMP=1) is next one while on Anand's Quake 4, SMP enabled is first, while SMP disabled is second(skeptics...).
THANKS FOR CONFUSING PEOPLE ANAND, otherwise great article.
MrKaz - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Why Ati drivers where modified to recognize the Conroe processor?What was the problem if the processor didn’t get recognized?
I mean if the FX60 could say Unknown Processor and have no problems, (my mobile 2600+ says the same and runs OK).
What problem would have come from the drivers by not recognizing the processor?
Some drivers optimizations there? Like NVIDIA/ATI?
amano - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Just wondering.. did they use fear.exe, or a renamed fear.exe?Because there seem to be some issues with the fear benchmarking that cripple the AMD:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=254...">http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=254...