Core 2 Duo Reviews are out !!

[octave]

First INQpressions Intel E6700 and X6800

Theinquirer

However, there is still one thing that disturbs me about the Intel Conroes. The load times on our Far Cry tests simply took ages, regardless of whether we used a NetWurst craptecture or Core marchitecture. AMD loads FarCry in a matter of seconds, and in this particular game, we feel like watching Athlon 64 to complete SuperPI after running Conroe for three years. B-o-o-o-ring. A big surprise for me was the fact that Quake 4 gameplay also experienced more hiccups on Conroe platform than it did on a competing AMD platform. After all, it is a fight between GeForce on an nForce motherboard and LinkBoost is a nice improvement as well.
Also, CPU-Z showed that it cannot get its act together when it comes to reporting the true clock speed of E6700. It reported flawless clocks for the X6800 and EE965/955, but E6700 was stuck at 1.6 GHz no matter what. Oddly enough, we transferred the installation of CPU-Z from the AMD test bed, but still no change.
Looking into the crystal ball
If the claim that “Intel makes great CPUs” is true, the claim “Intel sucks at motherboards” is true as well. Sadly, the testing was conducted with third revision of the very same motherboard. If you’re investing in Conroe right now, bear in mind that your machine just might not support the future quad core Kentsfield CPUs, which are bound to use a 1.33GHz front side bus. To us, the safest bet for a Conroe based computer would be to hold out for an nForce4-SLI-16X or nForce 590 SLI based motherboard, but then there’s ATI’s plans, of course. We would also avoid betting your shirt on any of the 965 chipsets, since the lack of IDE controller and current zerg-rush bolting of UATA-133 support does not add to the corporate stable image Intel is trying to convey to its customers. Also, there is the small matter of Windows Vista compliance. But you do not want to buy these CPUs with integrated graphics.

First Thought: E6700
We think the Core 2 Duo and Extreme marchitectures are highly positive and gives consumers a real choice. E6700 offers great performance, and you no longer need to shell out $1,000 for a gamer CPU. Fifty three per cent of the price will be sufficient. $500 for a CPU may sound like a large sum of money, but we’re talking about $500 that achieves the same or better performance than FX-62 which costs more than double the money. For the price of a single Athlon 64 FX-62, you get a CPU, an excellent cooler, a motherboard and a 7900GT graphics card. Did we say “better performance” as well? However, do not place four drives in RAID5 before the BIOS update or B-2 revision of CPU kicks in. There were some weird happenings, and they repeated on Bad Axe and ASUS P5W motherboards. We are waiting for a new motherboard with a non-Intel chipset, to get to the bottom of this.

[octave]

Sorry for double posting, can the mods merge my earlier reply with this?

TGdaily has a review on core2duo

[deathvirus_me]

Muuahhhaa .. can’t wait to get one of this … getting a new for dad , and probably will get a X6300 , and then oc it to around 2.8 - 3.0 GHz … …

[mjp1618]

Contemporary Dual-Core Desktop Processors Shootout - X-bit Labs

Good article, compares the Conroes and the K8s in a wide range of areas…

It is evident that the launch of Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Extreme processors has a very serious effect on the entire computer market. As we could already see, these processors set new performance records for high-end and mainstream PC systems. As a result, Intel earns the prestigious title of the today’s fastest x86 processors developer. Unfortunately, the AMD processors that used to be so popular among computer enthusiasts for quite some time, are being pushed back to the background turning into just a good solution for inexpensive systems. In order to retain the sales volumes, AMD undertook an unprecedented reduction of the pricing on their solutions. In other words, the new CPUs based on Intel Core microarchitecture stimulated rapid changes in the computer market.

Today we are going to track down all the changes that took place lately in order to get a clear vision of what is happening with the contemporary dual-core processors. Therefore, we will not only look at the CPU performance, but will also analyze other characteristics of the available solutions and try to estimate how attractive the new and old offerings from AMD and Intel are in the current situation.

Our test systems demonstrate pretty similar results in typical office applications as well. Core 2 Duo processor family is again faster than all the competitors. Any processor with Core microarchitecture and 2.4GHz+ clock speed is faster than any solutions on K8 or NetBurst microarchitecture under all types of workload.

You remember that we have always recommended the solutions from Athlon 64 processor family as the best choice for gaming needs, and this conclusion was absolutely justified by the significant performance advantage we could see over Pentium 4 and Pentium D CPUs. Now the situation has changed dramatically. The new generation Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors are on top of the charts when it comes to performance in most contemporary games. The top solution from AMD, Athlon 64 FX-62, gets defeated not only by Core 2 Extreme X6800, but even by less expensive models such as Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Duo E6600. As for the Pentium Extreme Edition 965, this previous generation CPU designed specifically for top gaming systems, turns out slower than even the youngest Core 2 Duo model – the E6300.

Audio and video encoding tasks are a great illustration of effective processor performance. In fact, the CPU is the only component that affects the codecs performance: all other computer subsystems hardly have any influence on the performance in these tasks. However, despite the different type of workload we are looking at in this chapter, the situation we observe is exactly the same. Core 2 Duo processors are far ahead of all their rivals, leaving them not a single chance. In particular, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 is about 22% faster than Athlon 64 FX-62 during digital content encoding. The advantage of the new top processor from Intel over the previous-generation Pentium Extreme Edition 965 based on NetBurst architecture (that has actually been specifically optimized for work with streaming data) is even greater and equals 49%.

Power Consumption:-

OK, this has to be seen to be believed.

Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors impressed us with their low level of power consumption. These processors are truly ahead of their competitors from the power consumption standpoint. The top Core 2 Extreme X6800 with the clock speed of 2.93GHz consumes even less power than Pentium D 915 and Athlon 64 X2 3800+. And if we compare the power consumption of this CPU with that of the same type processors such as Athlon 64 FX-62 or Pentium Extreme Edition 965, then the difference will be almost twofold.

In other words, Intel processors on Core microarchitecture are not only unprecedentedly fast but also impressively economical. So far they have no real competitors here. However, we have to stress that we haven’t yet finished testing the Energy Efficient AMD processors that are about to start selling fairly soon. Hopefully, they will get close to Core 2 Duo solutions from the power consumption standpoint.

Thus, to achieve the performance level of a Core 2 Duo processor, AMD Athlon 64 has to work at about 20% faster clock speed, and the Pentium D processor has to run at about 90% faster clock speed. This ratio allows us not only to estimate the approximate relative performance of contemporary CPUs, but also to get a better idea of what new models will be eventually coming out in the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2 processor families.

Conclusion:-

However, the Conroe launch doesn’t at all mean that AMD lost this battle. This company managed to rebuild the structure of its offers so that they could fit into the market in these circumstances. Yes, AMD let Intel take the high-end market, however they adjusted the prices on their solutions in such a way that they still remained very attractive mainstream offers. Keeping in mind the upcoming transition of all Athlon 64 X2 processors into the Energy Efficient category and the reduction of their TDP to 65W, AMD solutions may prove up to the mark from the power consumption standpoint. However, this statement needs to be double-checked, which we will do in our upcoming testing.

In other words, although the launch of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme is certainly a new stage in the evolution of x86 processors, it is still too early to proclaim Intel’s complete victory over AMD. Both companies will continue coexisting in the market. Although AMD will have to temporarily give away the high-performance segment and focus mostly on the mainstream and value solutions.

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All I can say is: :wow: . The best Conroe article so far, IMO.

Edit: Avoid hot-linking images from other sites. Kindly use a free image hosting service like ImageShack

[whateve_r]

Will wait, it never hurts to wait. Will buy a conroe or something better next year. My Opty165 will last be well till then, i hope…

akS !

[SoulFire]

are there any reviews out yet for the conroe boards and prices ?

[Switch]

Check out at anandtech… they have a conroe buyers guide… and that too pretty detailed :)…

There you go: AnandTech: Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster

[mjp1618]

Conroe and EM64T: Is There a Problem? - XBitLabs

Conclusions

As we have expected, nothing serious has happened. CPUs with Intel Core microarchitecture and EM64T technology work normally in 64-bit modes. No dramatic performance drop has been detected in most benchmarks.

Of course, there are a few applications, when Core 2 Duo work slower in their 64-bit versions than it would in their 32-bit ones. Among them are Windows Media Encoder 9 or 7-zip archiving tool, for instance. However, since the other testing participants have also lost some of their performance in these tasks, the problem is most likely to be not in the microarchitecture. EM64T technology of Core 2 Duo processors has a positive effect on the performance in the majority of applications.

*The diagram shows the performance increase (in percents)

for CPUs with Intel Core and AMD K8 microarchitecture

when we switch from 32-bit to 64-bit applications.*

At the same time I would like to point out that it looks like Athlon 64 processors ensure higher performance increase when switching to 64-bit work mode. The average performance improvement we have seen from Athlon 64 FX-62 equaled 16%, while Core 2 Extreme X6800 demonstrated only 10% average performance boost. This way, there is a certain difference: AMD K8 turns out 6% mode efficient in 64-bit mode than Intel Core. However, this difference cannot compensate for the 20% performance advantage of the Intel Core 2 Duo over the Athlon 64 X2 working at the same clock speed, which we have pointed out in our previous articles. Therefore, we will not change our conclusions about the performance of the new Intel processors even keeping in mind the upcoming launch of 64-bit Windows Vista OS family.

Edit: Avoid hot-linking images from other sites. Kindly use a free image hosting service like ImageShack

[mjp1618]

Conroe vs. AM2: Memory & Performance - AnandTech

Intel has done a remarkable job of concealing the issue of not having an on-processor memory controller. The intelligent look-ahead for memory works very well, and it makes the chipset-based Core 2 Duo memory controller appear to be as fast as the on-processor AM2 in many cases. This does not change the fact that the AM2 memory bandwidth is really greater than Core 2 Duo or the fact that AM2 scales better in memory, exhibiting a steeper slope in performance increase as memory speed increases than does Core 2 Duo. That just means as Memory Speed increases AM2 will benefit more and Intel will eventually need to move to an on-processor controller.

Probably the hardest conclusion for many will be the fact that increasing memory speed, increasing clock speed, and increasing CPU speed alone will not be enough for AM2 to catch up to Core 2 Duo in performance. The performance gap that remains when overclocking AM2 to 2.93GHz at 266 clock speed with DDR2-1067 is still huge. A die-shrink from 90 to 65nm and the additional cache that will allow will definitely help, but we are even skeptical there with Core 2 Duo already overclocking to 4GHz and beyond. No doubt AMD will find a solution, but it is now clear this will not be an easy fix for AMD.

[mjp1618]

Real Gaming Challenge Rematch: Intel vs. AMD ---- ExtremeTech

When you consider all six games, the winner becomes abundantly clear. There’s not a single game where the Core 2 Duo didn’t deliver a higher average frame rate. Across all games, Intel’s new CPU delivered a 16% higher frame rate. What is more important is that it spent a significantly smaller amount of time beneath our arbitrary thresholds for a really smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience. In fact, there are three games—half of our sample group!—where the Core 2 Duo essentially never dipped below the minimum threshold at all.

[mjp1618]

THG Tuning Test: Core 2 Extreme vs. Athlon 64 FX-62

Conclusions

The benchmark charts will surely cause many readers’ eyes to light up. What we show you here applies to high-end systems for 2007.

We put the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 up against the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. With careful optimization, the performance of an Intel Core 2 Extreme system can be increased by a substantial average of 16.8 percent (though this is where a look at our test applications is required). The Athlon 64 FX-62 only managed a performance jump of less than half that figure, 7.2 percent, with equally careful optimization. When compared head-to-head, the overclocked Core 2 Extreme outperformed its AMD counterpart by nearly 30 percent across the board.

A quick look at the power consumption we measured during our testing also shows that an overclocked Intel system under heavy load requires 29 fewer watts than the AMD unit, while delivering 30 percent more performance. The strengths of the overclocked AMD system showed up at the other end of the usage spectrum under light or idle loads. In that case, the AMD system consumed 29 fewer watts than did the Intel Core 2 Extreme.

We also took a look at our lab engineers’ notebooks. Raising the FSB and memory clocks on the Intel system increased memory throughput from 5.7 to 7.3 GB/s. AMD’s integrated memory controller enabled memory throughput for the Athlon 64 FX-62 to increase from 9.3 GB/s to a record-breaking value of 10.7 GB/s.

Want an comparison of a more mundane, everyday sort? Try this on for size: the overclocked Intel system compressed an entire 2.5 hour movie on DVD in under 6 minutes! This involved converting from DVD9 to DVD4.7 formats. The real strengths of the Intel Core 2 clearly lie in the video realm: the Intel system converts a 2 hour movie into the well-known DivX format in 93 minutes, whereas the AMD system takes 155, or just more than one hour longer, to complete the same task.

Check out the benchmarks: The Core 2 Extreme as well as the E6700 outperforms the FX-62 overclocked to 3GHz in almost every application… And even the E6600 beats the 3GHz FX in many applications… :thumb:

[paraman]

Another excellent review is at TechSpot

[mjp1618]

MADSHRIMPS - Intel Core 2: Is high speed memory worth its price?

Conclusive thoughts

So does Core 2 need high speed memory to shine? The answer is a resounding no! This is different from AMD AM2 where more expensive memory is needed to get the most out of the system.

On Intel Core 2 pure synthetic memory bandwidth benchmarks show a 30+% increase, but this does not translate in a noticeable performance bump in games and applications, where the increase, at best, is ~6% and this going from cheap high latency PC3200 to expensive low latency PC6400, and while these expensive modules do take the performance crown, their lead over the mostly cheaper PC4200 rated sticks is smaller than 3% in real world benchmarks.

So it doesn’t matter much what memory speed/timings you buy, the value line will suit the Intel Core 2 system just fine, but do keep one thing in mind, as in our testing we found performance actually decreases a bit going from PC4200 (533) to PC5300 (667)!

The Core 2 has a front side bus (FSB) speed of 266Mhz x 4 (Quadruple) “1066Mhz”, the ram is running at 266Mhz x2 (Dual Channel) x2 (DDR) = “1066Mhz”, so with PC4200 memory and FSB are running synchronized. When you use PC5300 you are no longer running synchronous with the FSB and a memory divider of x1.25 (5/4) has to be used. The older Athlon XP from AMD also displayed this decrease in performance when running memory asynchronous due to its short pipeline, where memory latency is more important then memory bandwidth. With the Pentium 4 the pipeline was longer and the effect of running asynchronous which increased latency was masked. Core 2 technology marked Intel’s return to a shorter pipeline and thus is more similar to the Athlon XP than the Pentium 4.

By running the memory synchronous to the FSB you have the least amount of latency and thus performance is at its best. Why is PC6400, which is also running asynchronous, faster then? Because the memory speed is now that much higher that it compensates for the loss of running asynchronous and overall performance does increase. PC5300 worked great with Pentium 4 but it should be avoided when running Core 2, except when you plan to overclock. PC5300/6400 will give you the extra headroom to increase the FSB while keeping memory synchronous.

[mjp1618]

LinuxHardware.org - Intel’s Core 2 Under Linux

The Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that Intel has come back to the CPU market with a new core and with a goal to retake the performance crown by force. Anyone who said “the only way Intel will make a come back is to redesign everything,” they were right and that’s exactly what Intel did. Intel not only has the fastest chip in their top processor, they even take the performance lead at their second tier chip in six out of seven of our benchmarks. As well as being the fastest thing on the market, it also runs neck and neck with AMD in the heat generation and power consumption race. The Core 2 processor really is a very well designed chip with something for everyone.

It’s hard to say exactly where the Core 2 processor would lose its performance edge in this line-up but I’m betting that the E6600 would still stay very close to an FX-62 without much trouble. That’s a heck of a lot of performance for less than half the price of AMD’s top chip.

So how’s AMD going to take back the lead from here? My guess is with more cores and maybe going mainline with their 65W parts. If they could produce all of their CPUs at that level then they would have a lot of headroom on future parts. Also keep in mind that AMD has yet to go to a 65nm manufacturing process. It will be interesting to see when that will happen and how much AMD will gain from the move.

Now is a great time to be CPU shopping because no matter which side of the aisle you look on, you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards. Along with Intel’s chipset offerings, keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs.

[paraman]

A comparison between P5B, P5N32-SLI, and PDH, ASUS mobos is at Techreport