Spring IDF 2006 Conroe Preview: Intel Regains the Performance Crown
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 7, 2006 3:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Intel is very excited about its new Core architecture, especially with Conroe on the desktop. It's not really news to anyone that Intel hasn't had the desktop performance crown for years now; its Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors run hotter and offer competitive or lower performance than their AMD competitors. With Conroe, Intel hopes to change all of that.
From top to bottom - Quad-core 65nm Kentsfield, dual core 65nm Conroe and 65nm Pentium D
Intel setup two identical systems: in one corner, an Athlon 64 FX-60 overclocked to 2.8GHz running on a DFI RD480 motherboard. And in the other corner, a Conroe running at 2.66GHz (1067MHz FSB) on an Intel 975X motherboard.
The AMD system used 1GB of DDR400 running at 2-2-2/1T timings, while the Intel system used 1GB of DDR2-667 running at 4-4-4. Both systems had a pair of Radeon X1900 XTs running in CrossFire and as far as we could tell, the drivers and the rest of the system setup was identical. They had a handful of benchmarks preloaded that we ran ourselves, the results of those benchmarks are on the following pages. Tomorrow we'll be able to go into great depth on the architecture of Conroe, but for now enjoy the benchmarks.
As far as we could tell, there was nothing fishy going on with the benchmarks or the install. Both systems were clean and used the latest versions of all of the drivers (the ATI graphics driver was modified to recognize the Conroe CPU but that driver was loaded on both AMD and Intel systems).
Intel told us to expect an average performance advantage of around 20% across all benchmarks, some will obviously be higher and some will be lower. Honestly it doesn't make sense for Intel to rig anything here since we'll be able to test it ourselves in a handful of months. We won't say it's impossible as anything can happen, but we couldn't find anything suspicious about the setups.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Just to list a few:Doom 3 test uses standard file (Demo1)
Far Cry uses standard maps
Battlefield 2 tests have been linked a few times (I created them; ask for a link if you can't be bothered to dig it up)
HL2 maps have been made available before; I don't know that anyone else has our current maps, though.
FEAR uses the built-in benchmark
DivX/Xvid encoding (Sum of All Fears Ch.9) can readily be found if you want
Winstones is used elsewhere and *could* be downloaded/puchased (it's no longer officially supported)
Sysmark is used elsewhere and can be downloaded/puchased
Worldbench is used elsewhere and can be downloaded/puchased
SpecViewPerf is publicly available
PCMark, 3DMark are publicly available
There are plenty of tests that can be corroborated. Do some of our tests use internal files? Sure - every site does that. Generally speaking, though, when configured with identical hardware our results are consistent with what's reported elsewhere. Let's not forget that most other results are just as proprietary as any of our results; that's the real problem.
StriderGT - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Will you get into the trouble of producing numbers for the A64 X2 2.8 that would resemble intels's benchmark? At leats where this is possible. I think it would create lots of cretive buzz...JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
I'd reproduce it if I had such a chip. ;)Maybe someone else at AnandTech can help out. If I can get my hands on an FX-60 and appropriate other hardware, I could give it a shot. The only test we can directly verify is FEAR, of course - the others used Intel demos, so we'd only be able to show scores for our demos on other games.
Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Thanks Jarred, I guess I could have explained myself better.
That's basically my point. Nobody's tests have been independently verified. If someone is going to throw out the testing that Anand did at IDF, then pretty much ALL testing Anand has ever done needs to be thrown out also.
I'm attempting to tell people that you can't pick and choose for arguments, there's too many smart people here to fall for that. Either Anand's testing is valid (I think it is), or it's not. Someone can't say that one day it's valid and anothr it's not just because it doesn't show the results they want it to.
Sunrise089 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
No, this is wrong. What Jarred posted means that if you or I set up a rig with the same hardware as AT uses, normally an FX-57 and 2x512meg of DDR-400 2-2-2-? for game benchmarks we could get the EXACT SAME RESULTS AS THEM, within a reasonable margin of error, so long as you use the same testing files they did, which according to Jarred are freely available. Just because most other sites have slightly different test rigs by no means suggests AT's tests are not independently verifiable. To state otherwise calls into question AT's integrity as an information source.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
That's the same thing I said.Sunrise089 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I see that now. I think I let my desire to defent AT outrun my need to carefully read the post I think I disagree with. Sorry.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Hey, no problem!StriderGT - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Anand did not configure the test at IDF. They reported the results...HUGE difference
StriderGT - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
"Okay, show me one web site that has ever independently reproduced Anand's results.To the best of my knowlege, none of the files that Anand uses for benchmarking are available to the public."
Timeless piece of human intelligence:
Okay I will show you some berries and my closet full of benchmark files
PS If you do not trust anandtech's reviews how do you trust them reporting intel's?!?!?