Core Duo Reaches the Desktop

rtt writes "AMD has long reigned the desktop CPU market due to Intel's offerings struggling to keep up in terms of performance and power consumption. Yonah is the predecessor to the Core architecture and is predominantly a mobile chip, and is used at the heart of Intel's Viiv technology. Bit-tech has an article about Yonah beating the top of the range desktop AMD chip, the FX60, clock for clock. From the article" 'When Yonah is running at the same clock speed as AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60, we found that it beat it into a corner in just about every situation.'"

Already on the desktop

[daveschroeder]

Apple is aready using the Intel Core Duo T2500 in the iMac [apple.com], and the Core Duo and Core Solo in the Mac mini [apple.com].

Based on these and other benchmarks it would appear that Merom ("Core 2 Duo", the next generation portable processor, Conroe (the next generation desktop/workstation processor), and Woodcrest (the next generation workstation/server processor) will have quite a bit to offer.

Uh

[Moby Cock]

Core Duo has been available in a desktop machine for months. They are standard in every iMac.

Re:Lies! Lies and slander!

[chrismcdirty]

Dell.

That would be the Conroe

[Sycraft-fu]

AKA Core 2 Duo. Not sure on offical launch date, November I think. At any rate it's their high performance chip based on the Core design, targeted at desktops. Faster and has EMT64 (Intel's name for the x86 64-bit extensions). Limited testing on it at this point, since it's still engineering samples only, but AnandTech found it to be about 10-30% faster than a 2.8GHz Athlon X2 (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2713&p=1) .

Wait a minute...

[thebdj]

First, I would hardly say it is beating it. The numbers are all close, but most the processes they are running are almost running into other limits beyond processing speed at this point. The differences are not that great and the chip still loses (and much more then it whens other tests) in anything that is single threaded.

The other thing we need to remember is pricing. I was checking prices the other day for 4200+ processors and D950 processors. While almost exactly the same price, right now the AMD would still be much cheaper because of RAM price differences (especially if you get large RAM sticks, I am looking for 2x 1GB) and motherboards. Find motherboards for AMD and Intel that I believe were equal in features had the Intel motherboard almost $20 more then the AMD one.

Now, while I cannot attest for the power consumption on Intel right off, AMD is releasing more energy efficient processors with the AM2 release, due in just a few weeks. There should also be a slight (5-10%) performance increase based off of information from reviews of the processors and boards while still in development (improvements may be better in production models), so I would not call this a win for Intel yet.

I am glad that Intel finally seems to be catching up with AMD, which hopefully will only lead to better competition between the two over time. I really do not like these speculative reviews (remember those Opteron 64-bit reviews before the first Athlon64s hit), so someone wake me up when Socket AM2 and its processor are out and the new line of Intel chips is actually available and not just a ramped up Yonah. Especially since the cost of the motherboard they used makes you want to cringe. (I have yet to have to break $100 on my motherboards.)

Re:Wake me up when it supports 64-bit

[cixelsyd]

FX-60 is a dual core processor, just for the record.

Re:Wake me up when it supports 64-bit

[WhiteWolf666]

MP3 Decoding and Encoding, as well as Video Decoding and Encoding, are significantly faster in AMD64 mode than i386.

Of course, if you want proper end-to-end AMD64 software you'll need Linux.

AMD64's performance improvements are a reality on Linux, today.

Some benchmarks:
http://enterprise.linux.com/enterprise/05/06/09/14 13209.shtml?tid=121 [linux.com]

Some more benchmarks, on XP!:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1 665&page=6 [pcstats.com]

There are many, many, many more out there. If you're doing math-intensive things, AMD64 out performs i386. It's irrelevant whether its the larger address space or greater number of registers; either way, it works better.

Re:Here's who cares:

[TheGavster]

The Sempron [amd.com] processors are their low end, all sub-$100 from a quick glance at Pricewatch.

Let's Get A Few Things Straight about Yonah

[Shuh]

Yonah = "Core Duo/Solo"

Conroe, Merom = "Core 2 Duo/Solo"

The Woodcrest, who knows?

Conroe, Merom, Woodcrest = "Next Generation Architecture" = "Core Architecture"

Although Yonah is the "Core Duo/Solo," it is not actually part of the "Core Architecture."

Capisci?

How about the 3800+ X2??? Motherboard prices?

[markass530]

This is a $300 processor, that with a $100 motherboard can hit 2.5GHZ without any effort. Not only that but it's proven, and the motherboard it uses are prooven and have been put through the paces. This Core Duo 2GHZ Cpu is $420, and no one knows much about overclocking with the available motherboards. Only ones on newegg are $150 and micro atx (and in my experience these types of boards do not overclock well. This is comparing apples and oranges. Simple fact, my 3800 X2 using Sandra's bench's outbenches every Intel CPU except the $1000 EE Edition. and it's damn close on that.