Ten Year Anniversary of Core 2 Duo and Conroe: Moore’s Law is Dead, Long Live Moore’s Law
by Ian Cutress on July 27, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core 2 Duo
- Conroe
- ITRS
- Nostalgia
- Time To Upgrade
Core: Performance vs. Today
Looking back at Anand’s original review, and at a time where CPU performance made a lot of difference for gaming frame rates at 1600x1200, the conclusion was quite startling.
Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 didn't lose a single benchmark in our comparison; not a single one. In many cases, the $183 Core 2 Duo E6300 actually outperformed Intel's previous champ: the Pentium Extreme Edition 965. In one day, Intel has made its entire Pentium D lineup of processors obsolete.
Imagine something like that happening today. (Actually, if you believe what we’ve been told, AMD’s upcoming AM4 platform with Zen and Bristol Ridge might make its current desktop platform obsolete, but that’s a slightly different discussion because of how integrated graphics has adjusted the landscape for CPU focused silicon somewhat.)
That’s Intel vs. Intel though, against AMD it was just as damning.
Compared to AMD's Athlon 64 X2 the situation gets a lot more competitive, but AMD still doesn't stand a chance. The Core 2 Extreme X6800, Core 2 Duo E6700 and E6600 were pretty consistently in the top 3 or 4 spots in each benchmark, with the E6600 offering better performance than AMD's FX-62 flagship in the vast majority of benchmarks.
However, Core 2 Duo has now been out for 10 years. I’ve pulled up some benchmark data from our database to see if we have any matches to compare against processors that cost $214 today. The Core i5-6600 fits our bill perfectly, and there are two benchmarks which match up. I’ve also dotted the graphs with a range of more recent AMD and Intel processors for progression.
Our 3D Particle Movement is more for idealized synthetic workloads, however FastStone is all about image conversion and favors high frequency, high single threaded performance.
Naturally, modern processors nearing 4.00 GHz have a large advantage over the 2.13 GHz version of Core 2 Duo, as well as multiple generations of improved microarchitecture designs and smaller lithography nodes for power efficiency. However, has any processor family had as much nostalgic longevity as the consumer launch of Core? One could argue that while Core put Intel on top of the heap again, Sandy Bridge was a more important shift in design and as a result, many users went from Conroe to Sandy Bridge and have stayed there.
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Hazly79 - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
History of Intel processori 386 1986
i 486 1989 - 94
Pentium / MMX 1994 - 96
Pentium II 1997
Pentium III 1999
Pentium 4 / 4 HT 2002 - 04
Pentium D 2005
Core [ 2 ] Duo 2006 - 08
Core [ 2 ] Quad 2007 - 08
Core [ i ] Nehalem 2008
Core [ i ] Westmere 2009
Core [ i ] Sandy Bridge 2011
Core [ i ] Ivy Bridge 2012
Core [ i ] Haswell 2013
Core [ i ] Broadwell 2014
Core [ i ] Skylake 2015
Core [ i ] Kabylake 2016
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
So how many decades will it take til cpus have significantly faster single-thread than a 6700K@4.4GHz?Notmyusualid - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
+1Mr Perfect - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
Hmm. We've got an ancient 2007 Macbook with a 2GHz C2D(T7200 I think) in it that's still used for web browsing on a daily basis. Upgrading it to 4GB of ram and a SSD made it surprisingly capable.It's not all a bed of roses though, as random things will come out of left field and floor it. I think it's mostly flash heavy sites, but Twitter and Vine freak it out a little.
Hulk - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
I vividly remember the anticipation and hype leading up to the C2D release. The the years of struggle Intel had with Netburst before Conroe. It was what I consider the end of the golden age of the CPU. Great job Ian!Impulseman45 - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
Ah, it wasn't the Pentium Pro it was based on. The Core family was a direct descendant of the Pentium 3 Tualatin. They stopped sales of the of the Pentium 3 Tualatin because it was outperforming the Pentium 4. They migrated that technology to the notebook line as it was much more efficient. It became the Pentium M. When Intel realized that the Pentium 4 Netburst architecture was a dead end and they needed a new chip to go up against AMD, they sourced their notebook chips to build the Core series. See this is what is called re-writing history. Come on guys, it is very well known that they sourced the Pentium M Yohan for the Core series. I do not know who did your research but it is all wrong. Go back and recheck your information. The Pentium Pro was the granddaddy of all the Pentium 2 and 3 chips so yeah, you can point to that chip in a vague way as the ancestor. But the Pentium 4 can as well well. So to be to the point, the core lines DNA goes back directly to the Pentium 3 Tualatin, So we have all been using very, very hopped up Pentium 3s the last 10 years. The Tualatin was an excellent chip. It overclock like crazy. There were Celeron and Sever P3 versions and all of them beat the hell out of the P4. Its know reason Intel had to kill it. Do more research so you can post accurate articles, please.Michael Bay - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
>teaching AT about CPU architecturesDamn it, you`re a riot!
Impulseman45 - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
These are not the original AT guys, they are all new people and they are not doing the research they should be doing. This is how history can get changed. People look to a reputable tech site that got something wrong and its written in stone. Well AT says this is how it is, even if they are wrong. Go check the history directly from Intel, This article is wrong and that is a fact, period. I felt it just needed to be called out on.natenu - Monday, August 1, 2016 - link
Refreshing to see this comment. HT was a marketing joke to keep up with clock rate shoppers.wumpus - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
When Dave Barry jokes about "speed is measured in Megahertz" you know you are ripe for some marketing in your engineering.