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Intel's Conroe Resurfaces, Benchmarks Strong 152

Posted by CowboyNeal from the kicking-the-tires dept.
MojoKid writes "Intel has been occasionally leaking performance results of their upcoming Core 2 Duo processor for the desktop, code named Conroe. At this years IDF select members of the press were allowed to get hands-on access to test systems for benchmarking. Now, coincident with this week's Computex show in Taiwan, Intel has seen fit to show us just what their soon to be released CPU can do, yet again. Select press members got together with Intel in New York city for another round of testing with Conroe. HotHardware has a performance showcase posted with scores from a Core 2 Duo E6700 machine and a 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition X6800. The results, compared against the backdrop of an overclocked 2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX-60 system, look very impressive indeed for Intel."
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Intel's Conroe Resurfaces, Benchmarks Strong More

Intel's Conroe Resurfaces, Benchmarks Strong

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  • Intel's a bit wierd now. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now that Intel has it's first non-technical CEO [cbronline.com], all they can talk about is vaporware of furture unreleased chips, while Shares of Intel have fallen 33 percent since Otellini succeeded Craig Barrett in May last year [bloomberg.com]. Should the board/shareholders really allow someone with a background like Otellini's to run a company like Intel? You see how well medieval studies people worked out at HP. IMHO they need to get the tech people back in charge at Intel if they want it to compete in a tech market. At least

    • Osborne Effect (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Visaris ( 553352 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @09:39AM (#15508797) Journal
      Intel is suffering from the Osborne Effect [wikipedia.org]. They have hyped their new products (which are comming in July/August of 2006) so much that no one wants their current parts. This has forced Intel to drop the prices of netburst (read: P4) parts through the floor to keep moving them. Intel is selling many parts at a loss, and they have more price cuts (up to 60%) planned for the 23rd of July. Conroe is a great chip, but it currently has bad yeilds and will not make up a significant portion of Intel's shipped CPUs until the end of this year. At that point, Conroe based chips will be 20% of production; you can only imagine how many will be available on launch, a whole 6 months earlier than that. Intel has a killer chip on their hands, but it will be along time before Intel is able to ship enough of these to do much to the market. In the mean time, Intel will continue to sell their old tech at a loss to clear out inventory and try to keep AMD from making more marketshare gains... I don't think it is going to work.
      • Intel is selling many parts at a loss

        What makes you think Intel is selling parts at a loss?

        • What makes you think Intel is selling parts at a loss?

          In a sense, all CPU companies sell some chips at a loss. Processing a wafer costs almost the same amount no matter what chip is on it. A mess of CPUs come off of the wafer and are then binned based on their power and performance characteristics. CPUs from each bin sell for different amounts. The top bin with the best chips sell for a lot and make a nice margin. The lower bins sell for quite a bit less, and have less of a margin. Many CPU compan
          • In other words, you don't know that Intel is selling under cost...

            For Intel to fully prodcue one Pentium 4 processor at 90um costs them about 24 bucks start to finish...

            So now that AMD has annouced price cuts to compete with Intel's price cuts, are they selling under cost as well?
            • to fully prodcue one Pentium 4 processor at 90um costs them about 24 bucks

              If the new Intel chips in the $150-$300 range really were so monumentally better than the existing line, they'd drop the Celerons and continue making the 2.8-3.4GHz P4s as their entry level.

              However, the new Intel is going to try increasing market share by focusing more on better marketing than just better engineering.

      • Except Intel doesn't need the sales of PIV to get Conroe out the door. Their latest FUD campaign has been that the Conroe chips will be so superior to anything else, noone would want one from the current generation. They're trying to stall the whole market, and from the mainstream press I've seen I think it's working. The PIV price cut press is catching the "bargain" hunters, and the Conroe press is keeping "performance" hunters on the fence to see what's coming. And I don't see any major games released rig
        • I don't think so.

          There is ALWAYS something faster coming out. Anyone who has ever bought a computer can tell you this.

          It's been happening for years.

          Intel is in the lead, AMD leapfrogs Intel. Intel races past AMD. Mhz is everything. No, instructions-per-Mhz is everything. AMD is faster again. Oops, Intel just released the Super-extreme-hyper-overclocked-needs-a-2-ton-air- conditioner CPU to take the lead. Wait, AMD has a brand-new architecture that uses less power and benchmarks 50% faster at an equivalent

      • Re:Osborne Effect (Score:5, Insightful)

        by zakath ( 180357 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @10:29AM (#15508952)
        Intel is suffering from the Osborne Effect. They have hyped their new products (which are comming in July/August of 2006) so much that no one wants their current parts.


        I don't think Intel is suffering from the Osborne Effect. People don't want their current products because the competition has a better offering. The only option Intel really has is to hype future products because it has become common knowledge that their current line up can't compete with AMD. The hype you're hearing is more of an effort to stop the exodus to AMD, it's yet to be seen if that will work.

        Intel is selling many parts at a loss

        ...and you know this how? Are you privy to the details of Intel's cost/unit? Yes, they've cut prices but they may have had plenty of room to do so and still make money.

        • Hardware analysts are saying AMD will lose its edge when Core 2 comes out, which beats AMD on speed and power consumption. It will be interesting to read opinions around here since there's a definite anti-Intel slant.
          • Everyone needs to remember that Intel's core chips are 65nm. AMD begins volume production of that next year? So Intel will have an advantage for a time. (Provided both aren't having issues like most people had when starting with 90nm.) It really isn't shocking that they would have lower power consumption than 90nm parts. AMD should worry over the more IPC, however, that may partially be due to the same thing. When this chip gets released, it will probably be top dog. It's not released so at the moment, AMD

          • AMD processors have a better I/O architecture (hypertransport) and scale properly in SMP systems.

            Intel processors are only faster if you are running small, tight loops that fit in L1 cache. AMD processors are faster when doing more multitasking.

      • Sorry, but I don't buy that. The price cuts are because Intel is desperate to win back marketshare from AMD, before it's too late.
        The Conroes are also being offered at a huge discount
        A Conroe 2.40GHz/4M costs $316, half the price of the equivalant Athlon (the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ cost $645)
      • I'd love to know where you 'facts' that conroe yields are low and that there are supply problems come from. Intel has its issues - but last I heard - yields were good, and intel don't tend to have supply problems. What you say about the Osborne Effect is true - but it applies doubly to AMD. It's clear that Intel has changed gears, and as a large company is out to "smite" the smaller competition.

      • Re:Osborne Effect (Score:2, Informative)

        by qbit23 ( 981517 )
        A lot of wishful thinking presented as fact.

        1) "which are comming (sic) in July/August of 2006" Woodcrest launches June 26. But you already knew that.
        2) "no one wants their current products" In which alternate universe?
        3) "Intel is selling many parts at a loss" Dicounts don't imply loss.
        4) "Conroe...has bad yields" Source: AMD message board?
        5) "Conroe...will not make up a significant portion of Intel's shipped CPUs until the end of this year." Just plain false.
        6) "Conroe based chips will be 20% of produc

      • Re:Osborne Effect (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        And by the time they're shipping in volume, the 4 core Opterons are due.

        Their new motto is "Leap Ahead." They'd better shake a leg.

        After several years of incremental improvements, it's starting to get fun again.

      • In this case the Osborne Effect only applies to enthusiasts. Do you think average John Doe engages in speculation about Intel's new processor architecture?

        The reason why Intel is selling parts so cheap right now is simple: they have started to massively clear their P4/Netburst inventory. In the next months it's going to degrade to their "Celeron" line of processors. Noone will want to buy a P4 in half a year.
      • Why you think Intel is selling at a loss?
        Why you think that Intel is having bad yields?

        Yes, Conroe will only be 20% of Intel's production. But that's very likely sufficient. Conroe is their high-end chip. They already have Core Duo out and the remaining P4s and P4Ds (even 65nm P4s).

        High-end chips make up a small amount of the market. 20% seems like plenty.

        I agree that finding Core 2 Duos might be difficult for a while. But then again, when I bought my AMD X2 4200+, it wasn't easy to find, and ultimately I h

  • On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Visaris ( 553352 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @09:33AM (#15508778) Journal
    These benchmarks were run on boxes that Intel built. Even the AMD box was built and configured by Intel. Trusting these benchmarks is abit like trusting a study funded by the oil industry claiming that global warming isn't real. There have been a good number of independant tests of the Conroe and these put the top of the line Conroe around 12% faster on average than a FX-62. The results from the Intel benchmarks show a much bigger performance delta, and to be quite honest, I don't trust them one bit. Somewhere around 15% is much more reasonable.

    • Core 2 Extreme (Score:3, Informative)

      by mfh ( 56 )
      You have a point about the Intel thing, there. Just like the response time on a monitor -- if the benchmarks come from the manufacturer, how valid can they truly be? Where are the stips?

      Point is -- Core 2 Extreme has great specs but the map and the landscape are wholly different. Time will tell.

      • Re:Core 2 Extreme (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cnettel ( 836611 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @10:02AM (#15508869)
        The difference is that there is no trivial way for an end-user to dispute those performance numbers. It's even out of reach for several hardware sites (and there are real differences between different production sets of the same panel). Compare this to CPU performance: ANYONE will be able to run these benchmarks in two months. Anyone can run them today on the AMD and NetBurst side to get reference data. If the Intel results differ a lot at actual release, hell will break loose and Intel would be really out of touch to think that they can succeed. Mainstream users won't care anyway, and the technical users would certainly disprove of the methods.

        So, Intel could do this, but they are probably quite aware of the consequences.

        • While you have a decent point, I don't think you remember history well. A few years ago, Intel created the "NetBurst" architecture. They ended up with a 31-stage pipeline, and Intel said that they would take CPUs to 10GHz by 2005/2006. Intel even had press events and demonstrated a 5GHz NetBurst P4.

          Where are our 10GHz Pentium 4s now? Does anyone really remember Intel's promise? Does anyone really care?

          Intel can fudge benchmarks and make crazy promises all they want. In the end, everyone seems to s
          • Where are our 10GHz Pentium 4s now? Does anyone really remember Intel's promise? Does anyone really care?

            Intel did put itself through a whole round of public humiliation over this.

            And are you actually suggesting that Intel was lying when they stated they could scale NetBurst to 10Ghz? It turned out to be huge engineering and strategic mistake that's cost them dearly (see recent financial news).

            • Re:Consequences (Score:3, Informative)

              by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
              I was at a talk a few months back by the chief architect on the NetBurst team, who has since left Intel. He had some quite interesting things to say. One was that the P3 and 4 were great fun to work on, because they were the last chips anyone was allowed to design where performance was the only constraint. Now, power usage is far more important, and it will continue to be so for quite some time (i.e. until we start using some as-yet-uninvented form of magic to make our chips). The other thing he said wa
          • It's one thing to say "in five years, this should scale to umph GHz". It's another to say "look, this is what we are going to release real soon now". If you think that Intel's credibility wasn't hurt in the minds of those (that is, geeks) that at all care about these things, I also think that you are wrong.

            Anyway, we'll know in less than two months.

        • I'm on the fence with you on this one. Sometimes a vendor will try and bombard the market with misconceptions just to create enough confusion that the mainstream market will be hypnotized by long enough for the company to make budget. Is that the case with Intel? Not as much as it used to be, because people are onto the way they used to do business. ViiV really hurt Intel. Did you know that the media center ports on HP Media Center systems won't do audio alone? They need the video cable too! Half of my cust

    • Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @09:45AM (#15508817) Journal
      One big difference likely came from the RAM. The AMD box had DDR400, while the Intel box had DDR2-800. DDR2 has a greater latency in terms of cycles than DDR, but when the DDR2 is twice the speed of the DDR then this disappears in absolute terms and you are left with the RAM in the Intel box having about the same latency, but twice the throughput.

      Having said that, all of the benchmarks run were publicly available. There's nothing stopping you from configuring an AMD box yourself and seeing what numbers you get. In fact, I'm slightly surprised that the review site didn't do this.

      • DDR2-800 is not generally available to the retail world. So the only benchmark that makes sense is this

        AMD FX-62 sales volume: LOTS
        Intel Core 2 Duo sales volume: Zero.

        Not only that but how hard is it to go in the bios and make and AMD64 processor perform sub-optimally? Sure it's DDR400 but CL4-4-4-10, and you need the ECC scrubing turned on, disable the cache and ...

        If Intel really wanted a benchmark they should ask AMD for engineering samples of next year's cores and they could pit them together.

        Tom

        • Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:5, Funny)

          by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @10:09AM (#15508895)
          DDR2-800 is not generally available to the retail world.

          http://www.pricewatch.com/memory/845489-1.htm [pricewatch.com]

          If Intel really wanted a benchmark they should ask AMD for engineering samples of next year's cores and they could pit them together.

          ring...ring...ring...
          AMD: Hello?
          Intel: Hello, AMD?
          AMD: Yes?
          Intel: Intel here. We've had to cut back on our industrial espionage budget this year, seems we've had an unexpected revenue shortfall and can't afford that group any more
          AMD: Have you considered outsourcing it to India?
          Intel: Well, no, not really. We were hoping you could just send us some samples of your lab prototypes.
          AMD: Sure, sure, say no more. We'll send those over right away via courier. You'll have them on your desk first thing in the morning.

          Somehow, I just don't see that happening...
          • [DISCLAIMER: NOT SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF AMD...]

            AMD has challenged Intel to duels [go to their sunnyvale lab they [used to?] have posters up in the public space that say so. I wouldn't say AMD wants to take stuff out of the lab and make it public but I suspect if Intel said "let's set up a contest with current retail parts" they MAY [see above] answer the call.

            It's no big secret that AMD wants to challenge Intel [and beat them] on every front.

            Intel is comparing next gen stuff to current to say "look our /cur
            • I'd love to see Intel do MP benchmarks in public though. They'd get their asses handed to them.

              Well, Anandtechs tests of a 4 core Woodcrest server against a Sun Niagara and 4 core Opteron sure seems to suggest otherwise: http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772 [anandtech.com]

              Granted you may be after 8-way or higher, but that is an interesting enough test. The Woodcrest makes an extremely good showing there.

              • 2.2Ghz Opteron against 3.0Ghz core of the future?

                *I* have 885s in my 2-way Tyan board at my house. That's a 400Mhz or 16% boost in CPU performance. I'm sure anandtech could get themselves some 285s for a benchmark.

                Tom
                • Unless the Opteron magically scales better than linear when going from 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz (both tested) to 2.6 GHz it is still way behind, not only on raw performance but also on power consumption and price/performance. The woodcrest is a CPU of the future yes, the future being less than two weeks from now.
                  • It's hard to tell, they randomly jump from 275 to 880 and back. First off, why didn't they just choose 285s? Failing that, why did they jump between 2 or 3 different AMD cores? Who knows if their results are even accurate.

                    On the crypto side, the results are hard to read. The graph shows more signatures/sec for AMD but the table lists otherwise. Even still, I find it hard to believe Intel has any lead on that market. AMD has a 5 cycle multiplier and three ALU pipes for bignum math [hint: this is my pas
                    • It's hard to tell, they randomly jump from 275 to 880 and back. First off, why didn't they just choose 285s? Failing that, why did they jump between 2 or 3 different AMD cores? Who knows if their results are even accurate.

                      It seems a bit odd that they use different machines yes, however, Anandtech is typically fairly thorough with these things so I see very little reason to doubt the accuracy. At any rate it does satisfy your requirement of tests independent of Intel.

                      On the crypto side, the results are

        • I think AMD should respond by benchmarking their 65nm dual core chip due out 2007 against the Intel Pentium 4.
          • AMD doesn't seem that quick to hype processors that look good on paper in the same way Intel does. I think this is a fair comparison for the current generation. I find it sort of strange that AMD has been sticking with 90nm for so long, but maybe their getting a better value out of their fabs this way. They've already been able to do some pretty amazing things on the power consumption front with the current tech.

        • Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The same usual nonsense you're always talking (every single one of your posts I've seen was FUD or trolls).

          I'll fix your post for ya:

          AMD FX-62 sales volume: a few units (most people don't wanna spend 1500$ on a CPU)
          Intel Core 2 Duo sales volume: lots starting next month (significantly faster than FX62 and at a FRACTION of the price)

          Not only that but how hard is it to go in the bios and make and AMD64 processor perform sub-optimally? Sure it's DDR400 but CL4-4-4-10, and you need the ECC scrubing turned on, d

          • Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:1, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            For someone being so vehemently anti-FUD, what's with the $1500 figure for the FX62?

            Seriously, if you want to make a point, don't make up numbers. Sheesh.
          • Whether true or not, your post comes across as very fanboyish too.

            You should never take a manufacturer's claims about their product as fact. If separate, independent testing proves that the Intel offering is better than the AMD chips mentioned, then that's a different matter. In this case, the only information available is from Intel and those they chose, hence it is unlikely to be independent.
            • Hint: look up my CV and see where I work...

              We deal with crooked benchmarks all the time. The fact that these are Intel maintained boxes comparing next-gen stuff against RETAIL cores is stupid. Even if they release the cores in July it will be months before every corner store picks it up. Those FX-62's they comparing against were designed years ago [though the process/design has changed since] and probably fab'ed many months ago.

              It isn't as if AMD is saying "Ok we made Opteron, we're done, let's go make
        • As long as they are comparing CPU's that are a going to be launching, I was wondering why they did not use an AMD AM2 CPU that uses the same DDR2 RAM. "Typical" DDR2 is not very fast, thus the current real world comparisons of the 939/AM2 CPU's don't give a huge boost to the latest CPU. If DDR2-800 was common, the change over makes a bit more sense - possibly just what AMD was thinking as well.

          And yes - you can dog a machine by tweaking the BIOS. Our kit was in a final bakeoff with a competitor - the cus

          • I was wondering why they did not use an AMD AM2 CPU that uses the same DDR2 RAM.

            I also wondered, but my quick froogle search for available AM2 (DDR2 800) FX 60 CPUs brought up nothing. On the other hand, Socket 939 (DDR 400) FX 60 CPUs (which Intel used) are widely availablle. Therefore, the fastest available AMD Athlon platform that Intel could buy was Socket 939 FX 60, which uses DDR 400. It seems Intel made it even more fair by overclocking the FX 60 to approximate the performance of the unavailable FX

            • I've already seen the AM2 x2 5000+ in a personal rig (not mine) last week, so I got to believe Intel could get their hands on one of the DDR2 using CPU's. I'm just wanting to find out if fast DDR2 makes a big impact. Not seeing a huge boost with the slower DDR2 over the AMD chips using DDR1.
        • Actually, from what I can tell, it still isn't available.

          It's not on newegg. Pricegrabber only lists it at one place, and they say it comes June 30.

          http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant. mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120987&AF FIL=pricewatch&NR=1 [monarchcomputer.com]

          It appears AMD preannounced the FX-62, at least in terms of availablity to other than 1st-tier vendors.

          If FX-62 really ships June 30th, that'd only be 1 week ahead of Conroe, thus making your "ask AMD for next year's cores" com
      • except that benchmarks have already shown ddr2 really doesn't do much of anything for the AMD chips because they aren't bandwidth starved as it is.
      • Well, actually it was in the beginning. But it hasn't been for quite some time.

        You're getting messed up because DDR latencies are measured against the SDR clock, while DDR2 latencies are measured against the DDR clock. This is why you see things like 2.5 clocks on DDR measurements and you never do on DDR2.

        Anyway, when you see a latency 5 clock DDR2, that's the same as a 2.5 clock DDR. Except that the DDR2 is very likely running at a higher clock rate and thus the absolute latency is lower.

        I don't think the
        • I posted asking about this before (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173501&cid=1 4 439092) but never got a real answer. There was a discussion on RWT that touched the DDR2 versus DDR latency which other then the possibility of delaying the command cycle in DDR2 brought up that the DDR2 Intel controllers (and by extension the AM2 controller) were actually using 2 x 64 channels instead of 1 x 128 in order raise the efficiency. I never followed up on it completely as I have no DDR2 motherboards to play
        • I was curious enough to dig through the Intel north bridge data sheets for the 875P DDR and 975X DDR2 memory controllers. AMD's documentation is not as easy to digest and I was not able to find any detailed data on the socket AM2 processors.

          The Intel 975X interleaves two 64 bit channels while the 875P uses both DRAM banks as one 128 bit channel. Naive benchmarking will not show any advantage in fetching simultaneously from separate interleaved banks and Intel's FSB throughput is too low to take real advan
          • What was this to address?

            I was speaking of latency, and you speak of bandwidth and burst sizes.

            Neither bandwidth nor burst sizes affect latency.

            The indications of AM2 performance definitely go against your idea that AMD is more prepared to take advantage of DDR2. Their performance gains are nil, when the latency stayed about the same and bandwidth increased significantly.
            • My point is that Intel DDR and DDR2 chipsets use very different memory configurations (one bank of 128 bits versus two interleaved banks of 64 bits) and that the latency tests comparing them may not be accurately measuring what is really happening. Depending on the specifics of the test, they could be comparing one bank 128 bits wide versus one bank 64 bits wide running at twice the clock speed in which case fill rates and latency should be almost identical. If the test uses a block size larger then the b
              • And since a cache line is 32 bytes on an Intel (16? no matter, either way it's 128 bits), that means all cached accesses utilize both channels and will have the increased transfer rate. It's apparent in the benchmarks anyway.

                I do agree that configs can alter first word latency more than full burst latency. But I honestly have trouble understanding what interleaved 64-bit banks means versus 128-bit banks. Classic interleaving meant simply pulling from both banks at once, which would produce the same results
                • Classic interleaving was used because the DRAM arrays were unable to supply data fast enough for the busses of the time. Interleaving allowed you to use one bus at twice or even four times the frequency that one DRAM array would support. Internally, DDR and DDR2 chips actually act very similar to this when they send busts of 4 or 8 transactions across one bus.

                  Each cache line fill is 64 bytes. The processor actually picks which of the 4 sets of 16 bytes it wants from the 128 bit DDR bank which then return
                  • I see. You say that 875P draws from A and B at the same time: AB AB AB AB. That makes sense to me, since if you do the math with DDR400, it was the only way to maximize the "800 MHz" FSB on the P4-3GHz.

                    But that DDR2 chipsets might draw from A and B alternately, sharing the bus. A B A B A B A B.

                    The 2nd appears slower, since it takes 8 clocks, but the clocks are so fast that both fill the FSB bandwidth equally.

                    And you're saying that even though the 2nd is "fast enough", if they went to the first system again,
                    • In the first case, the 875P and the socket 939/940 Athlons fetch from memory like AA AA AA. There is only one bank which is 128 bits wide.

                      In the second case, the 975X and other Intel DDR2 memory controllers fetch AB AB AB. They use both banks of 64 bits each simulaneously.

                      For the 875P and the socket 939/940 Athlons, the 64 bit DIMMs are arranged in pairs to make a single bank of RAM 128 bits wide. The memory controller fetches 4 lines of 128 bits at a time to fill the processor's cache. Note that there
                    • I'm not piggybacking on Linus.

                      Hehe. Linus Torvalis was just involved in a discussion like this over at RWT. It makes PERFECT sense for AMD to have done this. It allows their fabs to produce a single basic design for multiple markets instead of dividing their effort into multiple designs. The mass production of one design lowered the cost enough to make up for any extra expense in the consumer market. This same effect has allowed x86 to overtake higher end markets from the bottom over time. Presumably Sony a
                    • If anything I am but it was more a case that I agreed with his position in the debate about the costs of AMD's integrated memory controller and whether is was appropriate for single processor consumer systems.

                      It is not a matter of reducing the number of chips on a motherboard for AMD or necessarily matching Intel's price. It was a matter of having a solution that would work were Intel was weak (2 to 8 cpu workstations and servers), using one design to cover both that market and the single cpu consumer mark
                    • No, the Mac Mini as-is could not be done on an AMD solution.

                      It would simply cost too much because you would need to purchase an additional graphics solution chip. Apple could do that before because they were using an outdated processor (G4). Buying an up to date, dual core CPU plus GPU plus NB plus SB just costs too much (even if you can fit it in there) to make the margins Apple demands.

                      The complexity of chips does affect their cost. But even a simple chip with a lot of pins (an AMD NB) costs almost as muc
                    • I am not convinced it is possible to resolve Apple's use of Intel versus AMD processors except possibly in the case of laptops which would naturally lead to them using Intel over their whole product line (at least to start) even if they determined AMD would be a better choice for some configurations. Even including all of the public pricing information available and different configurations, Intel could have made an offer too good for Apple to refuse and there is enough evidence they have done such things
    • It's not like they 'll win anything from faking benchmarks they would eventually be proven wrong, and that would be a bad thing for them, so just leave the paranoia.

    • Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem with your anology is that the industry funding of global warming research is presenting a real and alternative approach to the problem of global warming. It is not that global warming isn't happening it is a matter of finding the core problem. To blame global warming simply on economic output and not investigating other contributing factors is just bad science. It amounts to blaming recent volcanic activity on the production of green house gasses. Before such wild accusations are made
    • From independent equpiment:

      http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=27 71 [anandtech.com]

      You're right, these show lower numbers, more like 20% in gaming and still over 15% elsewhere.
    • I've heard that so often, and basically you're right. But all of the benchmarks show that the new Intel E6700 is 10-40% faster than the best Athlon FX. They can't fake that much with specially built boxes.
    • I strongly suggest you check out xtremesystems.org forums [xtremesystems.org], where the benchmarks have even AMD fanboys like yourself are ready to switch to Intel. These conroes have already run SuperPi 1M @ 10.xx seconds. Out of the box they will do 1M 15 seconds. An FX couldn't do that on LN2.

      A $316 Conroe can blast a $900 FX, and Conroes have been overclocking to 3.8+GHz on air.

      AMD is doomed, unfortunately, which means Intel will rest on its laurels again.
  • what kind of crap is that? Are they choosing the reporters who have been 'good lil boys and girls' and refrained from being critical of Intel? Do they believe we're idiots??

  • Not even a Current AMD System (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why did they benchmark it against a DDR1 socket 939 FX-60? Of course the memory performance is going to be slower, as will be a few other things. What about the AM2 FX-62 with some DDR2, that would be a more compareable benchmark. Not to mention that you can buy an AM2 processor and mainboard and have it in your living room right now, whereas this new Core2duo stuff is still way off in the distance. Intel must be very frightened of AMD if they need to drum up this much business right at the launch of AM
    • Why did they benchmark it against a DDR1 socket 939 FX-60?
      Standard marketing practice. I remember a RAID controller vendor had the gull to disable tag command queuing on their competitor's product before running benchmarks against their own, then declare their product superior.
    • Actually, if you were to do some research, you would realize AM2 processors have, at most, a couple of percentage points gain over their Socket 939 counterparts. Athlons simply don't benefit realistically from DDR2 yet. K8L may improve that, but for the moment using a 939 Athlon FX against a Conroe is just fine for benchmarking.

      But don't take my word for it. Check out what Anandtech [anandtech.com] has to say.

  • Do Intel choose which benchmarks are run? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by edxwelch ( 600979 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @10:25AM (#15508932)
    With the previous Conroe benchmarks, Intel specified which benchmarks could be run. I wonder if this is also the case in this review, because noticable absent is the SYSmark benchmarks.
    It is standard practice in biased tests to only include the benchmark where your product does well.
  • Why to compare a new generation of CPUs against and overclocked setup of one of the current best chips? Why not taking the test against an AMD chip with a similar NATIVE clocking or, maybe, against a similar X2, since the core duo is a dual core chip? And once again, it's fair to compare two completely different architectures by the sound of their clocking? Nobody remembers the ruckus that Intel did when AMD introduced a better architecture that simply ate Pentiums at equal clocking? Just a pointless piece
  • despite being on an intel optimised PC. It's the equilivant of being on a fresh install of a PC built by a talented system builder with a high budget. There may be comparissons between a lesser AMD system but most of the benchmarks so far have been ones directly comparable to other benchmarks performed by regular sites on systems they've built. I'm looking forward to the conroes because they seem to be bringing the price of CPUs down again which to me seem to offer less bang for buck than in the 2800xp da

  • I'm just waiting for Sharikou, Ph. D to show up. (Score:4, Informative)

    by MSFanBoi2 ( 930319 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @10:33AM (#15508963)
    Soon this clown will show up spouting all his anti-Intel pro-AMD rhetoric.

    He makes the worst of the Mac, Linux or Microsoft fanboi's look a touch out of the ordinary.

    Both the Woodcrest and Conroe have shown time and time again in INDEPENDENT testing, to be quite a bit faster than any of AMD's options. I've been testing a Dell 2950 with Woodcrest and it simply smokes the HP DL385 dual core setups time and time again in both SQL 2005 (mixed size transactions) and anything else I throw at it, most of the time by 30-40% real world numbers. Other testers have seen much the same.

    Intel just pulled a Microsoft. Microsoft was caught napping by Netscape. Intel was caught napping by AMD. It won't happen again.
    • I haven't seen any 'independent' tests yet where the machines contained identical hardware besides the MB and CPU. With that said, the Core Duo looks like a winner, and it looks like Intel will have the performance crown for the first time in a few years.
      It will be interesting to see how AMD's K8L part on 65NM will do, but that thing won't ship until next year.

      Still, IMHO, Intel will never recover to its pre P4 glory days. Before the K8 chips became smash hits in the enterprise, NO ONE seriousely considered
    • You're right; independent benchmarks show the Core 2 chips beating the pants off AMD's latest offerings. Even hardware analysts are now saying AMD will lose its edge in the server and desktop markets and will fall behind. However, don't expect anyone to listen around here--years of anti-Intel articles have shaped a certain viewpoint that only AMD is good, because they're the underdog. But that underdog is about to be beaten with, frankly, superior technology. The anti-Intel trolls can continue their rhe
      • Just a quick prediction: Intel will trump AMD by pushing the Conroe out. AMD will cut prices, so their chips fit nicely into the price/performance bracket that the market will allow them to sell at. Consumers win.
        The speed freaks will buy Intel for performance, as it gives the absolute fastest. The people that want good performance at a price that doesn't bust the bank will probably buy AMD (and that's the way it used to be with AMD & Intel for quite a while).
        Then, AMD will likely make modifications
  • Used to be that Intel (and others) would give samples to reviewers, under a non-disclosure agreement, a short while before the launch date and then the reviews using real hardware would be posted on the day of the launch. Now, we are getting more and more 'reviews' of hardware that is not actually being sold or even shipping or even with a firm launch date. This just seems like reviews of vaporware hardware designed to hype the product rather than an actual measurement of real performance of a product tha

  • Benchmarking (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Ice Wewe ( 936718 )
    This is an unfair comparison. The benchmarkers are using a Socket 939 FX-60, which uses the older, slower DDR RAM. If they really wanted to compare the next generation CPUs, they'd get a FX-62 Socket AM2 (940 pin) CPU, and test it with the same DDR2 RAM that was used in the intel test system. I think they'd find AMD would be able to match the performence of the Conroe platform.

    Thinking is...

    400/667

    0.599 = 60%

    That means that the DDR RAM is only 60% as fast as the DDR2 RAM they're using, and will only

    • Don't expect any relevant numbers out of Intel. If their shit could stand up in the real world everybody and his cousin would have the damn thing to run tests on so Intel could sit back and say "Yup we're back". Instead they are only giving out numbers from contrived benchmarks because AMD pwned 'em again.

    • Re:Benchmarking (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JorDan Clock ( 664877 )
      Actually, the performance benefit of DDR2 with Athlons is far less than 60%. Less than 6% in most cases. Check out this [anandtech.com] little comparison.

      I'm not an Intel fanboy or anything. I just think people need to be more objective. Intel won this round. Maybe AMD can make it up with K8L? Until then, however, I'm going to be buying myself a Core2 system.
    • No, the DDR2 is not faster than the DDR because it runs at much higher timings! Learn something before you post. Conroe destroys FX. Read some freaking enthusiast sites like xtremesystems [xtremesystems.org].
  • before you declare a winner. Media seems to have this fascination with projecting results before the contest has even started. Political election, sports, and technology. AMD or intels next generation are not shipping yet, everyone is projecting Conroe as a clear winner. Even if Intel Conroe will be the better processor, are they expecting to keep yields up next to AMD's. It would be a different story if Intels chip is 15% better but 30% more expensive. Lots of things can happen, companies don't talk about

  • For All You Nay-Sayers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vostok4 ( 882885 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @12:18PM (#15509359)

    Everyone here is constantly saying "Oh its an Intel system, built by an Intel team, vs. an AMD system, built by an Intel team... I'll trust the reviews when independant people get them."

    If you looked a little you would see, that there are already lots of people with the Conroe in their hands. And it has shattered every PI, 3DMark, world record there is. We are talking about 10s 1M SuperPi runs, and if you know anything about that benchmark you will know that is absolutely crazy. Why not read some forums, like XtremeSystems [xtremesystems.org] or more specifically some benchmarking threads [xtremesystems.org] where the world record was broken on air w/ Conroe, but now its under LN2 for some other people (including coolaler) and is holding the world record.

    • If you believe that SuperPi is representative of real-world CPU performance, then you will be very happy with the new Intel chip. I personally care more about multiprocess/multithreaded server loads using largely integer math with working datasets several orders of magnitude larger than the on-chip memory cache. Under such a scenario you want very fast memory transfer speeds between CPU and main memory. I have not seen any Conroe benchmarks related to that. I wonder why. We'll see how well the chip performs

  • This is all silly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by modernbob ( 558981 )
    90% of the PC's bought are sold to people who don't know the difference between Ghz and dual core. The hardware so far outstrips the software's ability to use it that it makes these comparisons kind of lame. I think both Intel and AMD need to shift to a new way to market themselves . With the exception of gamers and people that live tech no one really cares if the machine does something several milliseconds faster than something else. If they can write a letter and send email and the machine doesn't run pai
  • The next year belongs to Intel, but AMD is likely to catch up very fast. First of all, the transition to 65nm is quite close and it will definitely allow a decent speed boost. Even if that isn't enough, a new "improved" Athlon64 rev. G core is just around the corner (and I'm not talking about K8L).

    The advantage of Core 2 Duo is indeed spectacular (which is a good thing) but the competition from AMD will be fierce. I don't think AMD will soon surpass Core 2 (at least not before the K8L or K9 has matured)

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