AnandTech: Intel Penryn Performance Preview: The Fastest gets Faster

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	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...