Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Application Performance using SYSMark 2004 SE
We'll kick off our look at general application performance with SYSMark 2004 SE and as always, and we'll look at the overall score as well as the scores in each of the two suites - Internet Content Creation and Office productivity.
As we saw in our last preview of Intel's Core 2 Extreme processor, it posted SYSMark scores that were well beyond anything either AMD or Intel had been able to deliver in the past. With the final version of Core 2 silicon in our hands and a more stable/tweaked platform, we got even better numbers out of Conroe:
At the high end, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 was just under 36% faster than the Athlon 64 FX-62. In fact, even the $316 E6600 was around 18% faster than AMD's fastest. To add even more insult to injury the slowest Core 2 Duo in the test, the 1.86GHz E6300 is barely slower than AMD's fastest Athlon 64 X2.
The old Intel lineup of Pentium D processors is truly an embarrassment. Only the Extreme Edition 965 is remotely competitive and even then it can barely outperform the $183 E6300.
Drilling down into the SYSMark scores we've got the overall ICC results, which honestly are not much different than the overall scores we saw above. The Core 2 Extreme X6800 holds a 29% performance advantage over the FX-62 and once again, and the E6600 is able to outperform AMD's best by over 8%.
Intel's Core 2 performance domination continues in the Office Productivity portion of SYSMark 2004, with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 maintaining a 42.5% performance advantage over the FX-62. This time around, even the E6300 manages to remain competitive with the FX-62. This is Intel's new $183 part offering performance equal to that of AMD's $1,000 flagship FX processor; it's going to take a lot for AMD to recover from this deficit.
The individual SYSMark 2004 SE scores are graphed below if you're interested. The data is used in calculating the overall scores we've already discussed above:
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bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
But they're not available today. Why is that?So Intel is launching this twice? What is going on today? Technology preview?
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Sold out?
RTFA. The NDA lifted today. Launch is on the 27th.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
If they were sold out they would still show on Newegg and ZZF.I RFTA! That's how I was able to correlate the lack of product to the availability of benchmarks. Products leak all of the time and NDA's are held in place. This maybe a creative way of paper launching but it's still a paper launch.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, because that's the only two places you buy a CPU from.
Sheesh.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
bob and MrKaz, forever the fanboy.Please explain to me why Intel having the better cpu upsets you so?
MrKaz - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
And you?It can be better than Cyrix, IBM, Sun, ... I don’t care.
But you seem to care more than me.
If you don’t, why do you complain?
This is not for me because my maximum 100€ for processor.
It’s cheap (compared to others Intel past released brand new CPU) but not cheap enough.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I'm not a fanboi. I just hate hypocrites. If you read another post of mine in this section (use the scroll button Luke) you will see me praise the performance of the Conroe. I plan on buying one for my wife. I'll probably get a K8L if it turns out to be even or faster than Conroe otherwise I'll get a Conroe for myself.bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Here's the post I made. Sound like a fanboi to you?forPPP - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Why buying more expensive and slower Core 2 Extreme (X6800, 2.93 GHz) ? There is cheaper Woodcrest at 3.0 GHz !Are there no motherboard with unbuffered memory support for Woodcrest ?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Nope Intel doesn't allow their Server processor to be used for desktop stuff as it's LGA771 socket.