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
F.E.A.R. Performance
F.E.A.R. gets its own page for a couple of reasons:
1) It's the only gaming benchmark that we're using that doesn't use an Intel provided demo. This is the same demo we use in our tests.
2) The integrated test tool reports Min, Avg and Max results, and three graphs take up more room than one.
We ran with all of the effects settings at Maximum and the graphics settings at Highest defaults. Updated: As we've described in our follow-up article, there was an issue with the original F.E.A.R. results that has since been fixed. The charts below have been updated.
First up - the average frame rate:
If you had any doubts about the results on the previous page, this one should convince you. Even when running a non-Intel created demo, Conroe offers a 20% performance advantage over the 2.8GHz Athlon 64 X2.
The advantage exists in both the minimum and maximum frame rates as well:
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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Yep. Provided that there's no cheating going on here, then gratz to Intel. I'm not a fanboi of either camp, so may the best chip win!BrownTown - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
is there a catach ehre that I'm not seeing or something?, just can't believe that a new processor could spank the old generation that bad in gaming.Lifted - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
The catch is my next CPU will be an Intel. It was nice knowing you AMD.Patrese - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Any news about the price of this thing? If it is priced properly, I mean, if it is not 40% more money for 20% more performance, then I'd say WOW. If it is about the same prices we have today, then it'd be some massive kick on AMD a**...Doormat - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Prices were posted at DailyTech a few weeks ago - the 2.67Ghz chip is $540, the 2.4 is $300 or so.Furen - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
4 speed grades will be offered at launch so I'm sure there will be something that is priced low enough for most of us. I wonder how much of a performance hit the 2MB L2 parts will have, though, since I was those will be the more affordable ones.brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
there's gotta be some catch, right?Intel even overclocked the competition... that's quite admirable.
brownba - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
spankBrassbud - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
I don't know why anyone is finding this surprising. Haven't you all seen OCed Pentium M benchmarks? In many tasks a Pentium M is 10-20% faster than a comparably clocked A64. So now that we basicly have an optimized, die shunk Pentium M on the desktop that runs at comparable clock speeds to an A64, why is anyone surprised that performance is ~20% better on average?Yes, the performance is impressive. Yes, its disappointing in some ways to see Intel on top given all the success of the underdog AMD lately. But no, I am not surprised in anyway by these results. Perhaps there are inequalities in the benchmarks, perhaps not, but anyone who didn't see this coming wasn't being realistic.
stupid - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
Actually, it is not at all surprising given the fact that Socket AM2 is merely a socket change for the moment. Other than DDR2 support, virtualization, and some other things that I don't know about, AMD officially announced that there will not be much initial performance gains. Hence the fact that with the exception of the Athlon 64 5000+, all releases of the AM2 CPU will match the speeds of the S939 Athlons.There probably will not be any increases in speeds until AMD switches over to the 65nm process. While it is disappointing that AMD is not releasing a next generation CPU to compete with Intel this year, this is a transistional year for AMD. While it is possible to release a 65nm next generation CPU in a new socket, it is also prone to become a potential bust if the process does not go smoothly. Using the 65nm process and Socket AM2 on a current product is a smart move because it is already a stable product so less can go wrong.
A company can't always be on top of their game. It's always a leap frog race where the competition is always trying to get ahead of the other. Look at what's going on between ATI and nVidia, granted GPUs do have shorter product cycles than CPUs. Anyone, who expects AMD to remain on top of Intel and release new products at the same time does not truly understand the concept of competition in conjunction with research and developement.