Spring IDF 2006 Conroe Preview: Intel Regains the Performance Crown
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 7, 2006 3:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Final Words
While we're still comparing to Socket-939 and only using RD480, it does seem very unlikely that AMD would be able to make up this much of a deficit with Socket-AM2 and RD580. With Conroe's performance advantage averaging over 20% it looks like Intel's confidence has been well placed.
Also keep in mind that we are over six months away from the actual launch of Conroe, performance can go up from where it is today. We also only looked at the 2.66GHz part, the Extreme Edition version of Conroe will most likely be clocked around 3.0GHz which will extend the performance advantage even further.
AMD still does have some time to surprise us with AM2, but from what we've seen today, they are going to have to do a lot of work to close this gap. We saw performance today in the two areas that we were most concerned about with Conroe: gaming and media encoding, and in both Intel greatly exceeded our expectations. Also remember that Conroe should be lower power than the AMD offering we compared it to, although we weren't able to measure power consumption at the wall in our brief time with the systems.
Going into IDF we expected to see a good showing from Conroe, but leaving IDF, well, now we just can't wait to have it.
More from the show as we get it...
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Briggsy - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I'd say the evidence is enough to support 'Wait For Release and Reviews' rather than 'Bah, sod Intel' which has been the path for upgrading the past couple of years because Intel's been lost in the wilderness. However right now Conroe looks like a beast!AMD might gain at high clock speeds with DDR2-800, for applications where memory bandwidth is beneficial, especially if multithreaded.
When Anandtech reviews dual-core, it'd be interesting if they did scaling tests to see if DDR2 helps the X2 at high speeds compared with DDR1.
Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
As I said to you alter ego Griswold in another thread.Go ahead and tell me AMD is launching another architecture this year. Say K9 is shipping.
Please make yourself appear as foolish as Grissy.
Griswold - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
You sure sound like you get a free conroe soon. Doesnt take idiots like you to convince me that Intel could very well be the better choice very soon. It's previews like this that does the trick not your fanboi comments that we had to read even before anyone had any clues as to what Intel may come up with.Doormat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
K8L could ship this year. It wouldnt surprise me to see AMD push the K8L out to all segments intead of just the server segment if they are in fact that far behind Intel's Conroe on the desktop.Falloutboy - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
looks like intel put a bit more into conroe than just making a faster Pentuim M, hopefully AMD has something up there sleeves to combat this. Had a feeling intel wouldn't sit back another generation. but one thing to keep in mind is the 2.8ghz part was only running with ddr400 I'm woundering what the performance picture would look like with that A64 running the ram at ddr600 type speeds.vijay333 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
dammit, there goes my well-laid plans for upgrading my system. come on amd, don't make us pay for over-priced intel chips again :)code65536 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Don't forget, the Pentium D is currently cheaper than the X2, so AMD is not necessarily cheaper.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Now that's impressive.Griswald won't have much to to say in this thread.
Griswold - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Oh yes I do, I'll still give you a warm fuck you, because you're a fanboy and meanwhile I have no problem to admit that I will buy an intel based machine when my next upgrade is due in 2007 - if AMD doesnt have anything better.Questar - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Impressive use of language there. You're really showing off your level of education.