Previewing the Performance of the Intel Conroe

pirate rtt writes "bit-tech has spent some time with an Intel Conroe system and has published a preview of its performance as compared to the current Intel flagship chip - the Presler 965. From the article: 'Core 2 Duo is clearly a very capable processor. We found that it was faster than the current 965 processor in most situations on the desktop, and far more proficient at gaming - an area where Intel has traditionally been weak. The added memory bandwidth that will come from having faster RAM enabled on the Core 2 Extreme chips will be an extra bonus for those looking to Conroe as a gaming platform.'"

Are These Reviews Significant?

[buckhead_buddy]

The article reads:

The Core 2 Duo benchmarks we ran were not completed in our own labs and we have used some unfamiliar tests in order to establish how well the new Core architecture performs. This was because we were not allowed to tweak the system or install our own benchmarks - the machine was built and configured by Intel engineers.

So if Intel provided hardware, chips, and tests themselves, isn't this more of a write-it-yourself press release from Intel than a real independent review? If they provided "some unfamiliar tests" then that would seem to indicate Intel doesn't know what common and familiar tests should be run, or (more cynically) that they didn't want potentially bad or uncontrolled results polluting their positive reviews.

Are reviews like this of any real significance?

And what makes this review different?

[LIGC]

There have been Conroe previews several sites, all of them using intel preconfigured boxes. The only way to make sure of Conroe's performance is to benchmark it once its bought. I'm sorry if I'm a bit of a sceptic, but I don't trust these boxes made by Intel to market Conroe.

Re:Wait for v2

[Surt]

All modern cpus have bugs. It is common practice to work around them in the compiler rather than retape the chip, an expensive and time consuming process.

Here's a link listing some of the errata known for Athlon processors (counting up to at least 154):
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf [amd.com]

Re:And what makes this review different?

[dusanv]

But this is exactly what this is about, to get you to postpone your purchasing until they acutally ship the product. This is a page out of the MS book. They are flooding the review web sites with these "reviews" where Intel supplied all the sofware/hardware and people are thinking: wait, this Conroe isn't bad, maybe I want to wait for it to finally come out. This is completely lame and I don't know why this gets posted on the Slashdot front page. Until there is an independent review this is nothing more than a press release.

Only half the issue

[ZachPruckowski]

The real question to most of the rest of the world is: how do these chips handle regular desktop duty? I mean, all we've seen tested is a high end chip versus a high end chip, not mid-range testing. Conroe is supposed to replace Pentium 4s almost everywhere, with single-core variants or Pentium Ds handling the low end. Where does that put us for a $1200 or $1500 computer from Dell or Gateway that everyone else is going to be buying. In my mind, the real issue is how this helps the huge mid-range of consumers and computers, not the 2% upper end that can afford ATI Crossfire X1900XTXs.

gaming

[ltwally]

"...far more proficient at gaming - an area where Intel has traditionally been weak..."

Define "traditionally." Normally that word is reserved for a long-term scope, in which case Intel has been better at gaming than the competition. Up until the Athlon, no x86 clone could compete with Intel when it game to games (2d or 3d). Think back to the K5 & K6 -- neither was good at 3D (not even the K6-3 could compete with a similarly clocked P2/P3. And the processors from previous generations of AMD, Cyrix, and IBM were much the same. The Athlon was the very first x86 clone that was better at gaming than an Intel flagship processor.

So, this isn't so much as Intel stealing the crown as re-claiming the thrown.

<shrugs>No big deal .. I just get tired of the Intel bashing crowd. "OMG INTEL IS TEH DEVIL, AMD IS OUR SAVIOR!!"

Re:Conroe vs. FX-62

[Brian Stretch]

1) Hexus used Intel's compilers with their synthetic benchmarks. Intel has been known to rig their compilers to ignore post-i486 instructions (SSE, etc) on non-Intel CPUs. This is suppoesd to have been corrected in later Intel compiler releases, but...

2) Some of those benchmarks, like Pifast, likely fit inside the Core 2 Duo's massive L2 cache. Intel uses all that expensive cache to compensate for their lack of on-board memory controllers and HyperTransport.

3) Curious how they chose much lower latency memory for the Intel machine than the AMD. I'm not sure that the higher bandwidth of the AMD PC's memory overcomes its higher latency.

4) Why use 1024x768 res for the FarCry benchmark and 1600x1200 with AA and AF cranked up for theother two games? Games are GPU-limited at hires, so if you wanted to spike the results where AMD is superior...

5) Despite all of that, the AMD FX62 still won the Cryptography benchmark.

6) Why are nearly all of these reviews showing up on websites outside of America? Could it be that Intel wants to keep these reviews out of reach of AMD's American lawyers?

It sure looks like Intel's playing dirty (again). Wake me up when we get reviews done outside of Intel-controlled environments.

Re:Wait for v2

[Tough Love]

"All modern cpus have bugs. It is common practice to work around them in the compiler rather than retape the chip, an expensive and time consuming process."

Nonsense. For compilers do not work around bugs in general purpose chips. If a chip bug can't be worked around by microcode or bios settings, or (in rare circumstances) the operating system, the chip will be binned. Compatibility is king in the general purpose CPU market. Nobody can sell a CPU that crashes on some programs that used to run perfectly well.

A better competition

[alfs boner]

With AMD taking the performance lead now and Intel gearing up for getting the top performer position again, I think we are going to see nicer battles now, much nicer than the GHz ones with AMD now much better in its market position and its new fabs.

Re:About Time

[ruiner13]

Why does a laptop need 64-bits? Are you addressing more than 4GB memory? I haven't seen a laptop yet that can support more physical memory than 32-bit chips can address, nor can I see someone doing heavily scientific work on a laptop as they tend to have slower, smaller hard drives. Extended memory and scientific precision are the only valid reasons I can think of needing 64-bit architecture, neither of which apply directly to laptops.

Technical Prowess of Reviewer?

[macentric]

When I was studying Computer Science in College I took a Parrellel Programming class. One of the first things my professor taught my class was that not all tasks are well suited for parrallel processing. In many cases it is more difficult to break the task up into smaller tasks and hand off to other processors or cores. In many cases performance will be significantly degraded by parallelizing a task that is not well suited to multiprocessing.

During several of the tests, the author of the article ran single threaded and multithreaded tests. In some of these tests, the performance of both the Conroe and Pressler chips decreased. The author incorrectly states that the multitasking performance of the Conroe chip is lower than the Pressler chips. He is incorrect becuase his own graphs reference multi-threaded performance. These are two entirely different things. While the multi-threaded perfomance of Conroe is slower in some cases, the single threaded performance was faster in most cases. These tasks obviously are not tasks well suited for parallel processing, and as such should be coded to run as a single thread to keep performace high.

While the rest of the benchmark seems solid, his analyis should be brought into question as he doesn't seem to have a solid grasp on his technology vocabulary. That or his editors don't know what they are reading either. If that is the case their reviews should not be showcased.

Re:Conroe vs. FX-62

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Hexus used Intel's compilers with their synthetic benchmarks. Intel has been known to rig their compilers to ignore post-i486 instructions (SSE, etc) on non-Intel CPUs. This is suppoesd to have been corrected in later Intel compiler releases, but...

For which benchmarks do you claim they used special Intel compilers? The only reference in the article is that they used an "Intel HT compiler" for their "HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark".

2) Some of those benchmarks, like Pifast, likely fit inside the Core 2 Duo's massive L2 cache. Intel uses all that expensive cache to compensate for their lack of on-board memory controllers and HyperTransport.

Noone's interested in Pifast scores. Conroe beating the FX-62 by almost 60% in Far Cry is much more impressing. And using a 65nm process Intel can sell Conroes with 4MB cache for very competitive prices. If you believe the leaked documents on the web a Conroe E6600 will sell for a little over $300 (in quantities of thousand) and should be on a performance level of the best AMD CPU.

3) Curious how they chose much lower latency memory for the Intel machine than the AMD. I'm not sure that the higher bandwidth of the AMD PC's memory overcomes its higher latency.

Even if there was a 5% difference, it wouldn't change the big picture.

4) Why use 1024x768 res for the FarCry benchmark and 1600x1200 with AA and AF cranked up for theother two games? Games are GPU-limited at hires, so if you wanted to spike the results where AMD is superior...

That's an interesting question indeed. But all other Conroe previews suggest that its gaming performance will be stellar.

5) Despite all of that, the AMD FX62 still won the Cryptography benchmark.

The average user doesn't use his CPU for cryptography very much.

6) Why are nearly all of these reviews showing up on websites outside of America? Could it be that Intel wants to keep these reviews out of reach of AMD's American lawyers?

Maybe because Intel makes most of its revenue outside the US?

It sure looks like Intel's playing dirty (again). Wake me up when we get reviews done outside of Intel-controlled environments.

July 23rd is rumored to be the launch date. Until then I'd definitely wait before buying a new CPU. Even if you want to buy an AMD processor, they're will be huge price drops.

Re:About Time

[toddestan]

Well, maybe you don't need a 64bit CPU right now, but it would be nice in a couple of years if you do need a 64bit CPU to not have to buy a whole new laptop. Kind of like how Windows 3.1 didn't need a 32bit CPU, but if you had one you were able to later install Windows 95 without buying a whole new computer.

With that said, since the original poster was contemplating replacing a 1.67Ghz G4 (a fairly recent model) with a brand new MacBook Pro, it seems he doesn't have a problem with shelling out for a new laptop either.