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
Final Words: Conroe Availability and Pricing
While Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors will be released at the beginning of Q3 of this year it will take some time for all of Intel's shipments to be Conroe based. The scary statistic is that by the end of this year, only 25% of Intel's Performance Mainstream desktop processor shipments will be based on Conroe. The remaining 75% will still be NetBurst based, meaning they will be Pentium 4, Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition.
Given how competitive Core 2 Extreme is with the Athlon 64 FX-62, you would expect no one to want to purchase a NetBurst based processor if they can get a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme for a competitive price. Intel does have a plan to deal with the over availability of undesirable Pentium Ds and limited supply of Conroes; Intel would do what anyone would do if you're trying to move a lot of undesirable product: cut the price.
By the time Conroe ships, Intel's Conroe and Pentium D pricing will be as follows:
| CPU | Price |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4M) | $999 |
| Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (3.73GHz/2Mx2) | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz/4M) | $530 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4M) | $316 |
| Intel Pentium D 960 (3.60GHz/2Mx2) | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2M) | $224 |
| Intel Pentium D 950 (3.40GHz/2Mx2) | $224 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2M) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 940 (3.20GHz/2Mx2) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 930 (3.00GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 920 (2.80GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 820 (2.80GHz/1Mx2) | $133 |
| Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66GHz/1Mx2) | $93 |
While the Pentium D has never been as attractive as AMD's Athlon 64 X2, at these prices some of them may be difficult to resist. The $93 Pentium D 805 will be particularly hard to ignore, when was the last time you could build a solid two processor workstation for a few hundred dollars?
The Pentium D 805 aside, the rest of the Pentium D line becomes extremely attractive after these price cuts take place, especially when you consider that AMD's cheapest dual core offering is still hovering around the $300 mark.
Intel's price cuts are very aggressive, to the point that they are the talk of the town in Taiwan. Every single motherboard manufacturer we met with asked us about Intel's price cuts and, more importantly, how AMD would respond. We've been told that AMD will respond with a series of price cuts of its own, the questions when and how much remain unanswered. Next week, in Taipei, AMD will be speaking with many motherboard manufacturers about its response to Intel's threat.
Despite the lower pricing on the Pentium Ds, it's not like Conroe ends up being all that expensive. The entry level E6300 and E6400 chips are both priced at $183 and $224, respectively, which is far from high. As attractive as the Pentium D's pricing may be, Conroe's performance and lower power consumption may still end up driving more demand than there is supply.
For the Dells of the world, Conroe availability shouldn't be too much of an issue because companies like Dell get first dibs. For years of not going with AMD, all while demanding something more competitive from Intel, you better believe that Dell is going to soak up every last Conroe that it can.
The problem then becomes what happens after Dell and HP have eaten their lunch, unfortunately the concern is that aggressive pricing won't be enough to reduce retail demand for Conroe. What we're worried about happening is a very small supply of Conroes on the retail market in late Q3/early Q4, resulting in much higher street prices than what you see in the table above. In the worst case scenario for Intel, Conroe's limited retail availability could result in a price to performance ratio equal to or worse than AMD's Athlon 64 X2.
The benchmarks we've seen show Conroe as a very strong competitor to the Athlon 64 X2, availability could be what limits how much lost ground Intel can regain before AMD has a chance to respond with K8L.
While performance here is extremely strong, we also haven't even touched on the overclockability of Conroe; from what we've seen, hitting above 3.5GHz on the highest end parts isn't too far fetched on air cooling alone. The absolute highest we've seen on air is 3.8GHz from a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. By the time Conroe officially launches, we'll be able to provide a full set of performance tests but so far we're seeing even more data to support the idea that Intel really has a winner on its hands.
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Boushh - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
The difference seems to be the HD PC Stats is using a Raport, Anand a Hitachi) instead of the memory (alltough it will have some impact, maybe even the SLi setup will have some impact).If you look at the communication test (which, according to Anand, is very I/O bound) you'll see:
Anand:
FX-62: 178
Core 2: 184
PC Stats:
FX-62: 263
D940 - 189
That is a huge difference. That will sureley translate into the overall scores, and it will influence some of the other scores.
So what was your point again ?
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
More tests will be coming out.. don't get your undies in a bunch.JumpingJack - Thursday, December 8, 2016 - link
what an idiot.VooDooAddict - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
The tests they have shown definetly have value to them. They are the tests that could be done in the time provided to show some nice direct comparisons between the very near future "top end" CPUs.To all those complainging about 1024x768:
Once they have the CPUs back in the labs I'm sure they will give us some highend video benchmarks as well. While the CPU doesn't have the largest impact at extreme resolutions I'm sure everyone can agree that it does have an impact, expecially with software driver overhead. However we should be more concerned with testing the CPUs on SLI/CrossFire. Other benchmarks have shown that the CPU can be a real limiting factor in high res SLI tests due to the large overhead from the SLI/CrossFire drivers. These CPUs are in the price bracket of those looking at SLI and even QUAD SLI systems (I can hardly begin to imagine the CPU overhead from QUAD SLI).
Personally I don't mind the 1024x768 ... then again that's probably because I run a large 27" 1280x720 pannel for gaming.
Genx87 - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
I was shocked to see the chip being used was 2.93Ghz. I was expecting it to be the 2.67Ghz chip Intel showed off.However this doesnt take away from the chip itself, it is still a very fast chip and I see an E6600 in my future.
However if you get time I am curious what kind of performance differences the AMD platform see's between this new Nvidia chipset and the chipset used by Intel. To me it appears to be at least a single speed grade if not more. The %'s appear on the surface to be the same as Intels demo but the difference is you are stuck using a higher speed grade to get this performance difference.
VooDooAddict - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Nice grab AT editors! I knew someone would find a way to get out hard info before the NDA, glad it was AT.With this knoledge I'm budgeting the E6600s (2.40GHz/4M) for my next SFF build. And I'm content waiting just a little longer.
Only thing that will disapoint me with the new build will be the lack of any true DX10 video options. However, thanks to what you've shown us, it looks like the first gen DX10 will be too power hungry for a SFF machine. Looks like I'll have to manage with a single 7900GTX or 7950GX2.
drewintheav - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
What will the real retail prices for conroe be? I would not be surprised if the initial retail prices are double what is being quoted everywhere!fikimiki - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Why didn't you take 4-4-4-12 memory which should give AMD much more speed thanks to smaller latency?This benchmarks only proves that IDF preview when 2.8 Athlon vs. 2.66 Conroe was benchmarked was setup by Intel - most of the benchmarks show 20% difference, not 30-40%.
Conroe is 4.5% faster clock-for-clock than AMD.
Taking an AVERAGE not RARE AND LOW DDR2 memory from the market and lowering clock to 2.8 should prove that Conroe is maybe faster clock-for-clock. And I belive that author knows that, but no conclusion about that.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Oh, my, god! Did you not read the article? That's the memory they had available.Anand has been doing this for a VERY long time, and has proven time and time again that he is unbiased.
On the other hand, WHO are you?
fikimiki - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Who am I? Just a computer user who understands all the fuss Intel is spreading from last 3 months. It is all about "controlled benchmarks" who proves nothing except a wish to beat competitition. If you look around to see other benchmarks you can see that Athlon performance is slight different.Look here http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1...">http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1... and you will see that Athlon was able to get 261 instead of 210 in Anand test.
Conroe gets 266. So this is 266 (2.93GHz vs 261 2.8GHz? You see the difference?