Intel Penryn Performance Preview: The Fastest gets Faster
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 18, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Penryn Performance at 3.33GHz in Beijing
Next up are Intel's Penryn benchmark results revealed at IDF Beijing. The system configuration is a little different, as both Penryn systems run at 3.33GHz and the systems are running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. The exact config is listed below:
| Test System Configuration | Wolfdale 3.33GHz | Yorkfield 3.33GHz | Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (2.93GHz) |
| CPU | Pre-production dual core Penryn 3.33GHz/1333MHz FSB 6MB L2 |
Pre-production quad core Penryn 3.33GHz/1333MHz 12MB L2 |
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 quad core 2.93GHz/1066MHz 8MB L2 |
| Motherboard | Pre-production BadAxe2 975X |
Pre-production BadAxe2 975X |
BadAxe2 975X |
| BIOS | Pre-production BIOS |
Pre-production BIOS |
Pre-production BIOS |
| Chipset Driver |
|
8.1.1.1010 |
8.1.1.1010 |
| Video Card | GeForce 8800 GTX |
||
| Video Driver | NVIDIA 100.65 |
||
| Memory | 2 x 1GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-15 |
||
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.10 320GB |
||
And now the results:
| Benchmark | Wolfdale 3.33GHz | Yorkfield 3.33GHz | Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (2.93GHz) |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro CPU (score) : | 3061 |
4957 |
4070 |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro Overall (score) : | 11015 |
11963 |
11123 |
| Mainconcept H.264 Encoder (seconds) : | 119 |
73 |
89 |
| Cinebench R9.5 (CPU test) | 1134 |
1935 |
1549 |
| Cinebench R10 Beta (CPU test) | 7045 |
13068 |
10416 |
| HL2 Lost Coast Build 2707 (fps) : | 210 |
210 |
153 |
| DivX 6.6 Alpha w/ VirtualDub 1.7.1 (seconds) | 22 |
18 |
38 |
For easier comparison we took the two quad-core chips (Yorkfield vs. Kentsfield) and looked at performance scaling between the two:
| Benchmark | Yorkfield Performance Advantage |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro CPU (score) : | 21.8% |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro Overall (score) : | 7.6% |
| Mainconcept H.264 Encoder (seconds) : | 18.0% |
| Cinebench R9.5 (CPU test) | 24.9% |
| Cinebench R10 Beta (CPU test) | 25.5% |
| HL2 Lost Coast Build 2707 (fps) : | 37.3% |
| DivX 6.6 Alpha w/ VirtualDub 1.7.1 (seconds) | 111% |
The Yorkfield system runs at a 13.6% higher clock speed than the Kentsfield system giving it an inherent advantage, but that's clearly not all that's making it faster. Half-Life 2 went up an expected 21.8% (we're assuming that Intel ran these numbers at 1024 x 768), and Cinebench saw a 25% increase in performance.
The DivX 6.6 test is particularly strong for Intel because it is using an early alpha version of DivX with support for SSE4. With SSE4 support, the quad-core Yorkfield processor ends up being more than 50% faster than Kentsfield, which bodes very well for Penryn if applications like DivX can bring SSE4 support in time for launch.
Final Words
Obviously we'll reserve final judgments on Penryn for our official review of the CPU, but these initial results look very promising. We would expect to see clock for clock Penryn vs. Conroe improvements to be in the 5 - 10% range at minimum depending on the application. Factor in higher clock speeds and you can expect our CPU performance charts to shift up by about 20% by the end of this year.
Intel has shown its cards, now it's time for AMD to respond with those long overdue Barcelona tests...
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Regs - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Though all we've been getting is words with no definitions. AMD has to show something by the end of this month. I see no excuse otherwise. They can't continue to throw us bones to pick at. That time ended over 6 months ago.JackPack - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'm sure AMD felt confident when they thought Barcelona was up against Xeon X5355 (2.66 GHz). Then, they realized they were up against 3.0 GHz. Now, it's Yorkfield at 3.33 GHz.Souka - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'd like to see 2 current top gen AMD chips included in bench... just to show how much of a difference there is...Roy2001 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'd like to see 2 current top gen AMD chips included in bench... just to show how much of a difference there is...-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Man, 6000+ falls short of E6700 and barely beats E6600 if not equal. So AMD has no player in Penryn arena, at least for now. If they cannot crank Barcelona frequency higher, then they have no chance. 2.3Ghz is simply far from enough to compete with 3.33Ghz Penryn.
Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
You're assuming that Barcelona won't outperform Penryn on an IPC basis, which nobody can say yet.ShapeGSX - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
That brings up a good point. Why is it that we haven't at least seen a demo of Barcelona like Intel has shown us for Conroe (last year) and Penryn?Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
AMD isn't in the habit of showing off it's technology very far in advance of its launch.defter - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Yeah right, they showed a running K8 system "only" more than a year before the launch...Roy2001 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Clock to clock, Barcelona could be faster. I just mean 2.3Ghz is too slow to compete with Penryn. If AMD can make it faster, say 2.8Ghz, it could compete with Penryn. This is just my 2 cents.Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
If Barcelona came in at 2.3GHz with twice the IPC as Conroe/Penryn (this is hyperbole, I know it's not going to), it would wipe the floor with either processor. You can't speculate on the performance without knowing these kinds of details.