Intel's Conroe Previewed and Benchmarked 261
DrFishstik writes "Anandtech has a few preliminary benchmarks on Intel's new Conroe architecture. From the article: 'As far as we could tell, there was nothing fishy going on with the benchmarks or the install. Both systems [AMD 2.8Ghz OC and Conroe] were clean and used the latest versions of all of the drivers.'"
Wait and see (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
1) AMD has something like 20% of the processor market, including OEMs. They couldn't deliver 80% of the market in many years even if the market wanted it.
2) AMD has no major process/architecture shifts between now and Conroe's release.
3) The AMD chip was already overclocked (but then again, they may have gotten a golden sample from Intel).
4) It's losing, not loosing.
Typical AMD fanboy rant (Score:2, Informative)
If you read the various benchmarks over the years, changing memory architecture or increasing it's speed directly does very little to increase most benchmarks more than a percentage point or two. Inceasing FSB also hasn't done much. Rather increases in processor performance are directly responsible for the disparity between the new Intel cpus coming.
Re:AMD Processor Model Unknown (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Latest chips, latest games & instant obsole (Score:2, Informative)
I held off playing half life 2 because I didn't think it would run (I had a 5900 agp previously than ran it really well)
I am running now at 800*600 with full details enabled and 2x AA and I've only noticed one point where it even shudders (the chimney blowing up and falling whilst in the airboat), if anything its smoother on this card than before, and the shaders are tonnes better (water, and nobbly glass doorways especially).
The only thing I'm missing is the ability to go to super resolution, but considering what I have gained I'm willing to wait.
I was very pleasantly surprised
Re:Wait and see (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Informative)
I.e., at first glance there are similarities which can lead to the obvious thought that the K8 core is just a K7 core with memory controller, but actually they're completely revamped, overhauled, enhanced and redone.
I agree that it is time for AMD to get a "K9" out of the door as the K8 as it is won't compete against Intel's offerings unless AMD somehow get 3.6GHz out of 65nm at launch (which is extremely unlikely). Of course, K8L will probably put AMD back into the lead in terms of floating point anyway, but integer is going to be very weak.
Unless AMD is sandbagging - but that's a faint hope for even the most ardent AMD fanboy. I think they miscalculated Intel this time around.
Which of AMD or Intel has the most fangirls?
Re:Is it 64-bit? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait and see (Score:1, Informative)
I agree that we should wait and see until truly independent benchmarks are done, but I don't see a reason to be as dismissive as the Ars writer.
Prices (Score:3, Informative)
According to this [dailytech.com], the 2.66 GHz Conroe will be released in Q3'06 at a price of US$530, in 1000-unit quantities.
With these prices, combined with the apparent performance and power differences (Conroe has a predicted TDP of 65W, compared to the FX60 at 110W), it looks to me like we'll finally see some heavy competition from Intel. Of course, a lot can happen between now and then - Intel have had manufacturing issues in the past, AMD have a new memory controller on the way and a 65nm die shrink due early next year, and can probably squeeze out two or even three speed bumps before Conroe really hits. Who knows, they might even drop their prices a bit.
Come Q3, I'll be sitting in the ringside seats with popcorn, ready to watch the fun :-)
Re:Wait and see (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Shock news. (Score:5, Informative)
The real hope for AMD here is that these results won't hold to other benchmarks in general. Apparently this set of benchmarks was handpicked by Intel, so that's almost certainly the case to some degree.
Re:Wait and see (Score:2, Informative)
Never mind that the AMD K7 was a carbon copys of the P6 microarchitecture, with incremental tweaks most probably applied to account for P6 shortcomings found in the field. That's an euphemism for `AMD stole Intel's field experience.' The K8 core is only an incremental tweak of K7, the major feature being the on-die memory controller.
So really, AMD can't blame Intel for using P6-derived cores since they're doing the same (not to mention the ethics of stealing a competitor's design). Also, their incremental tweaks aren't really that significant -- process technology changes account for the larger share of performance increase.
Intel tried to raise the bar with the P4 designs, applying some risky design features like hyperpipelined design, and unfortunately the strategy didn't work out all that well, in no small part due to power issues. Moreover they had to endure fanboy cries of `designed by marketing!', but that's the price one pays for exploring new ground in computer architecture. Meanwhile AMD will be content to follow on Intel's successful footsteps as they've always done.
I'm sorry if that's not a fashionable opinion in Slashdot groupthink, but there you go.
Your questions answered (Score:4, Informative)
If you're referring to "Hyperthreading", Conroe has none that I'm aware of. One thread at a time, in hardware (whatever you like in software of course).
the power consumption and with that the heat output
Conroe is supposed to have a Thermal Design Power of only 65W. Compare this to the current 3.6GHz P4's TDP of 115W. AMD rate the Athlon FX60's TDP at 110W; however AMD quote the maximum possible thermal dissipation while Intel quotes "typical", usually 75% of maximum (which would make the FX60 about 82W by Intel's reckoning) .
of course the expense of both the processor and the ram it needs
The 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz Conroes are expected to sell for US$316 and US$530 respectively, in 1000-unit quantities (the FX60 was released at US$1031). RAM is harder; reportedly Conroe chipsets will use DDR2, but possibly packaged as new FB-DIMMs. I don't have pricing for those yet, but they'll probably cost more. Consumer motherboards may just use standard DDR2 DIMMs.
Let's all hope it is true (Score:2, Informative)
You should not forget that Intel supplied both the hardware and the benchmarks. Obviously, they will only supply benchmarks where they win, and not the ones where the Athlon is better (if there are any). The F.E.A.R. benchmark seems to confirm that Conroe is really faster, but that's just one benchmark, which is not enough to convince me of Conroe's superiority.
That being said, I think it is in everybody's best interest if the benchmark results actually represent a real advantage; 20% more speed is indeed a big step forward.
Re:Shock news. (Score:2, Informative)
FX is known to be better in gaming than the X2.
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Informative)
Good summary of the Anandtech article though.
Re:Wait and see (Score:4, Informative)
The internal differences between p6 and k7 are enormous.
From microops sheduling (k7 using packed microops, in some kind of on the fly VLIW ) to the execution units (fully piplelined and superscalar FPU, for example, compared the non-fully piplelined scalar one), virtually the only thing thats the same is the fact it eats x86 opcode.
But the fact is that the changes between p6 and the new p-m derivates are VERY much larger than the change from 99s k7 to the latest k8.
Just look at a current die-photo of a k8... back in 99, the core transistor count was at the edge of what was possible economically, with l2 cache externally implemented. Nowadays, the nearly unchanged core is just a small lump on the side of the large and not very dense l2 cache-array...
Re:Wait and see (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Shock news. (Score:5, Informative)
DDR2-800 support, which is the known upgrade, basically adds bandwidth to a chip that isn't bandwidth starved as it is. Current speculation is that the new DDR2-800 Athlon64s will show up to a 10% performance increase on extreme bandwidth benchmarks (synthetics and HPC crunchers, for example).
THe simple fact remains that intel needed to do these tests at all, side by side. That's an admission on their part that AMD is beating them and beating them hard.
Intel has publicly stated (admitted) this already. This demo is to show that the chips they have planned for Q3'06 release (speculation is that they will be delivering machines based on it in July which is the very beginning of Q3, which is only 4 months away) perform well.
By the way, if speculation is that machines will be selling in July, this would imply that the chips are in manufacturing even as we speak. This means that Apple is most likely to announce availability of the new Intel based Power Macs around this time, as well and the various benchmark sites to have their hands on 'pre-production' machines in two to three months tops. We'll be able to see the real story then.
The only announced things from AMD even remotely in this time frame (specifically July and Q3'06) are the AM2 socket for DDR2-800 and a speed bump of the FX-62 to 2.8GHz (which is the equivalent of the overclocked part in the demo). Given that DDR2-800 is expected to be a 10% speed bump at most in most cases and that Conroe will be available at 3GHz (if not higher as rumored - 3.33GHz), I predict (a rather easy prediction to make) that AMD will be playing catch-up for once in the past few years.
Re:Shock news. (Score:3, Informative)
The truth about LaGrande (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Shock news. (Score:3, Informative)
Intel's heat issues started when they introduced Prescott, which was effectively a new architecture that didn't really deserve the moniker "Pentium 4".
When you compare the current P4 to the original P4, they have very little in common. Intel just stuck the P4 name on all of them for marketing reasons. In fact, if I'm reading all the coverage of Conroe correctly, they are going to call it a P4 too even though it is a completely different architecture derived from the Pentium M (which is itself derived from the Pentium III).
So the parent's point remains valid. When you compare the various initial speeds of the Conroe, since they will all be based on the same core, comparing performance based on clockspeed (between Conroe chips) will be a valid comparison.
Re:Shock news. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How many cores? (Score:2, Informative)