Intel's Conroe Previewed and Benchmarked

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.'"

A better competetion

[poeidon1]

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.

AMD Processor Model Unknown

[Bert64]

Did anyone else notice that the AMD motherboard didn't detect the processor correctly?

Re:Wait and see

[imsabbel]

That ars technica article is denial at its best.
"intel faster? CANNOT BE!!!111"
Sorry, i am as much an AMD fanboy as anybody (hey, their stock financed the car i am driving right now), but besides dual core and adapting sse2/3, VERY little has been done to beef up the aging k8 core (which is byitself also little more than a k7 with on die memory controller).
In a race, standing still will only lead to a loss.

Amd just now is in a position where their flagship is in fact a 7 year old core design, they are one die-shrink behind, and their cache technology is about 4 years behind intel (they need twice as much space per Mbyte cache on the same process size, plus are a factor of 4 slower).

Its time for a _real_ K9 just in the same way intel needed something new after netburst.

Re:Shock news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. You should have said: "this year's second fastest Intel chip will be way faster than AMD's chip which will be released in June 2006".

Let's look at the facts:
- They benchmarked 2.667GHz Conroe against 2.8GHz Athlon64 FX (FX-60 with 200MHz overclock)
- 2.8GHz Athlon64 FX will be released in June
- 2.667GHz Conroe will be released somewhere in Q3 2006
- Conroe Extreme editition clocked to at least 3.0GHz will be released somewhere in Q3 2006 (there have been rumours about 3.33GHz version)

Based on those benchmarks, fastest Athlon64 FX won't have a chance against 3.0GHz Conroe XE (which will have also faster FSB compared to Conroe benchmarked here), even if you into account that Athlon64 FX will soon support DDR2.

Nice to see a manufacturer take their time!

[brucmack]

The thing I like the most about where Intel is going is that they really seem to be taking the time to do it right. They have been doing exactly the opposite for the past couple of years... Prescott was released with many good ideas that were just never put together in a way that gave a good final product. Then the Intel dual core chips were just two single core chips pasted together, not even sharing the cache... again, it just seemed like a "let's just get it out the door" solution.

Video cards are even worse, with the shorter dev cycles. How many times have we seen a manufacturer put out a video card that is essentially the same as their last model, but with a ridiculous overclock and cooling solution. It's not innovation, and spending the time to develop properly would put us as a technological society further ahead a year from now.

But Intel's really taken their time with this, and hopefully they will have gotten their 65 nm yield issues worked out by the time they want to ramp up production. Hopefully AMD will follow suit and give us some great innovation in 2007!

Re:Latest chips, latest games & instant obsole

[Ginger Unicorn]

I have an athlon xp1500+ with a geforce fx5200 and 512MBs of RAM and i can play anything on the market as long as i turn the settings down to "my computer is a retard" levels.

even games that say they require faster CPUs dont.

Re:A better competetion

[Glock27]

Imagine a world where 98% of software is written Java for portability.

At one point, not that long ago, I agreed 100% with this thinking. I was still drinking the "Java will have C performance" Koolaid from Sun.

I'm now of the opinion that the "managed" languages are a short-term abberation, unless they adopt an ANDF type "freeze" approach. That is where the bytecodes are pre-compiled once into machine code, just like a traditional compiler. I'm also not happy with where Java is at as a language after 10 years of evolution. No operator overloading, feh.

Lately I've been looking at D [digitalmars.com] and Dylan [opendylan.org] for some projects. Both are quite advanced compared to Java, just as portable, and from what I've seen so far both outperform it in many areas. Game and HPC programmers could really use a better language than FORTRAN/C/C++, and Java will never be it, IMO. D seems the more pragmatic of the two, while Dylan looks "better" from a pure language perspective.

If the new processor performance metric (as touted by Intel) is "performance per watt", someone should take a hard look at Java and .Net performance compared with the top compiled languages. Dylan or D would work fine as "server side" web development languages.

Next gen Amd

[neuromancer2701]

I have a couple of question? To my knowledge the M2 AMDs are just the old 939s with the DDR controller changed to a DDR2 controller, so unless there is a massive improvement in memory management they can improve that much. I think the big change is going to happen when 1206 LGA comes out. I don't have any idea how much putting the PCIe bus in the processor will do but is got to be great for games. I don't understand why they had to do the 940 socket again they should have just jumped to 1206 but I guess they could not get that out in time. Does anyone know when the 1206 is supposed to come out? I think the Opteron is supposed to come early then the Athlon 64.


I need to upgrade my machine I am still running a socket A but at least it runs WoW. I will probably get a 939 when the 940 comes, hopefully that will be cheaper.

Re:TrustedComputing Inside (TM)

[segedunum]

We have been waiting for details on LaGrande for several years and according to Chapman, we will have to continue to wait and should not hope for much information on this technology this time around. This is somewhat surprising, especially if one considers the Apple-Intel deal - in which LaGrande appears to play a key part as technology that prevents MacOS to run on any PC.

They don't seem all that keen to talk about it either......... As Alan Cox said, if you don't have the key to your own hardware then it's not about security. I see stormy waters ahead...

Re:The Conclusion

[twiddlingbits]

The big question is going to be is when Intel makes a chip that runs fast AND runs cool. The Conroe is still as big of space heater as the older chips are. The AMDs are just a bit slower in everyday apps (90% of the users are not gamers and don't care about FPS) but it's a hell of a lot cooler. HEAT matters to those who run data centers.

Re:TrustedComputing Inside (TM)

[Kjella]

So... let's take the headcount:

1) Non-geeks who'll buy a new PC not caring and/or approving of whatever "security features" the salesmen told them about.
2) Geeks who'll just bite the bullet and run TCPA/Windows anyway.
3) Geeks who'll be on the TCPA/OS X-x86 platform.
4) Geeks that'll use Linux or turn off TCPA, but will still want new and faster processors.
5) Geeks who won't buy the 'evil as hell' processor.

Oh yeah, Intel is doomed now.

4) is the final nail in the coffin. It's like trying to stop people from buying an iPod which they plan to fill up with their CD collection, because it could also play DRM-protected AACs. That battle is already lost. It only remains to see what content will succeed at DRM, and which will be rejected by the consumers. I'm not too hopeful...

Re:Shock news.

[MSisNOT4Sale]

First off, the benches that intel provided are fishy. Using a motherboard that doesn't even recognize the FX-60? This just stinks of marketing poop and anand just stepped into it. Is there a benchmark of a crossfire/nvidia sli setup using a FX-60 and F.E.A.R.?

AMD is in big trouble...

[dtjohnson]

People have been waiting for Intel to destroy AMD with a better product ever since AMD came out with their Opterons, then their 'Venice' cores and then finally their 'X2' line of dual-core processors, all of which were much superior to the Intel chips. Intel already destroyed AMD a few years back when they released their Pentium 4 to compete with the original Athlon and everyone has expected the same thing again. That's probably why Dell has sat on the sidelines selling their aging, wimpy Celeron Ds and P4 systems at cheap prices.

Intel is a much bigger company, they have a lot more money, a lot of smart people, the nastiest, sleaziest marketers in the business, many more fabs, and great lawyers to fend off the AMD legal strikes too. The Intel 'Prescott' was supposed to do the job on AMD but it never came close. Now, though, the 'Conroe' looks like it is FINALLY the answer to AMDs stuff. Based on the benchmarks using Intel-supplied hardware and software, it looks like the 'Conroe' line of processors totally destroys the AMD FX-60 which is the fastest AMD processor sold today. Of course, you can't buy the 'Conroe' until September, 2006 but it will be worth the wait, based on the benchmarks anyway.

The only thing AMD has to offer is a little bit faster clock speed (aka FX62) and their upcoming AM2 socket systems which don't seem to do much of anything new other than allow DDR2 memory and a bigger cache. Looks like AMD is headed back to the bargain bin.