Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on June 6, 2006 7:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
A few months have passed since our original foray into the world of Conroe, and official naming has been announced for the processor. What we've been calling Conroe is now known as Core 2 Duo, with the Extreme Edition being called Core 2 Extreme. Initial availability of the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors remains unchanged from Intel's original estimates of "early Q3".
At this year's Spring IDF Intel made the unusual move of allowing us and other press to spend some quality time benchmarking its upcoming Conroe processor. Unfortunately we were only allowed to benchmark those games and applications that Intel loaded on the system, and while we did our due diligence on the system configuration we still prefer to benchmark under our own terms.
We're happy to report that we gathered enough parts to build two systems while in Taiwan for Computex. We managed to acquire a Socket-AM2 motherboard equipped with an Athlon 64 FX-62 and a P965 motherboard equipped with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz at our hotel, along with two sets of 2x1GB of DDR2-800 (only 5-5-5-12 modules though), a pair of Hitachi 7K250 SATA hard drives, and two NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTXes (one for each system) - it helps that all the major players have offices in Taiwan. Of course we happened to pack some power supplies, monitors, keyboards and mice in our carry-on luggage, as well as copies of Windows XP, Quake 4, F.E.A.R., Battlefield 2, SYSMark 2004 and Winstone 2004.
When faced with the choice of testing Conroe or sleeping , we stayed up benchmarking (we'll blame it on the jet lag later). The stage was set: Intel's Core 2 Extreme vs. AMD's recently announced FX-62, and while it's still too early to draw a final verdict we can at least shed more light on how the battle is progressing. Keep in mind that we had a very limited amount of time with the hardware as to not alert anyone that it was missing and being used for things it shouldn't be (not yet at least), so we weren't able to run our full suite of tests. We apologize in advance and promise we'll have more when Conroe launches, but for now enjoy.
The Test
In case we weren't clear: we acquired, built, installed and tested these two test systems entirely on our own and without the help of Intel.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.80GHz) Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz) |
| Motherboard: | nForce 590-SLI Socket-AM2 Motherboard Intel P965 Motherboard |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel P965 Chipset |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce 9.34 Beta Intel 7.3.3.1013 |
| Hard Disk: | Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 |
| Memory: | DDR2-800 5-5-5-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 91.28 Beta |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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munky - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Good work on running some benches on a system not built by Intel. Conroe puts out impressive numbers, it may just live up to the hype when launched.xFlankerx - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Perfectly in line with older performance figures. Conroe's looking like a surefire winner.PCSJEFF - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
If you wanna test the CPU in games, why don't you use Grand Prix 4 and Everquest 2: those two games 3D engines use a lot more the CPU than the video card.Supa - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
In the original benchmark, if you still remember, the 20% performance advantage was achieved by E6700 (2.67) over 2.8 AMD.Now the new 20% advantage was achieved by X6800 (2.93) over 2.8 AMD.
Not quite the same 20%.
If anything, the tightening of memory latency (5-5-5-12 in this test) can only benefit AMD a bit more.
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Gary Key - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
It benefits the Intel based system just as much. ;-)
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Original benchmark: Using Crossfire X1900XTX to alleviate bottlenecks
Now: Single Geforce 7900GTX
If you see FEAR benchmarks you'll see it'll be better in real world gaming as there is bigger advantage in minimum frame rates. At IDF system there is bigger difference in max frame rates.
Carfax - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Wow, the Core 2 is obviously bottlenecked by the single 7900 GTX O_O!!!Who'd have thought this would happen a few months ago?
peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Good point, when hardware permits, redo the test with TWO gpus in there and see if the same lead is evident.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The tightening of memory will benefit Core too.peternelson - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
And based on these performance figures,
a 4x4 board with TWO FX62 will vastly outperform a lonely Intel Conroe.
And for heavy I/O ie beating network and disk to death, Intel has not been shown to have the performance headroom. AMD I/O will scale nicely.
When Intel counter with quadcore, they will find their FSB even more limiting, at which point the wisdom of the Hypertransport approach will be evident.
Depends how quickly 4x4 comes to market (but said to be 2H2006)