Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on June 6, 2006 7:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
A few months have passed since our original foray into the world of Conroe, and official naming has been announced for the processor. What we've been calling Conroe is now known as Core 2 Duo, with the Extreme Edition being called Core 2 Extreme. Initial availability of the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors remains unchanged from Intel's original estimates of "early Q3".
At this year's Spring IDF Intel made the unusual move of allowing us and other press to spend some quality time benchmarking its upcoming Conroe processor. Unfortunately we were only allowed to benchmark those games and applications that Intel loaded on the system, and while we did our due diligence on the system configuration we still prefer to benchmark under our own terms.
We're happy to report that we gathered enough parts to build two systems while in Taiwan for Computex. We managed to acquire a Socket-AM2 motherboard equipped with an Athlon 64 FX-62 and a P965 motherboard equipped with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz at our hotel, along with two sets of 2x1GB of DDR2-800 (only 5-5-5-12 modules though), a pair of Hitachi 7K250 SATA hard drives, and two NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTXes (one for each system) - it helps that all the major players have offices in Taiwan. Of course we happened to pack some power supplies, monitors, keyboards and mice in our carry-on luggage, as well as copies of Windows XP, Quake 4, F.E.A.R., Battlefield 2, SYSMark 2004 and Winstone 2004.
When faced with the choice of testing Conroe or sleeping , we stayed up benchmarking (we'll blame it on the jet lag later). The stage was set: Intel's Core 2 Extreme vs. AMD's recently announced FX-62, and while it's still too early to draw a final verdict we can at least shed more light on how the battle is progressing. Keep in mind that we had a very limited amount of time with the hardware as to not alert anyone that it was missing and being used for things it shouldn't be (not yet at least), so we weren't able to run our full suite of tests. We apologize in advance and promise we'll have more when Conroe launches, but for now enjoy.
The Test
In case we weren't clear: we acquired, built, installed and tested these two test systems entirely on our own and without the help of Intel.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.80GHz) Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz) |
| Motherboard: | nForce 590-SLI Socket-AM2 Motherboard Intel P965 Motherboard |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel P965 Chipset |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce 9.34 Beta Intel 7.3.3.1013 |
| Hard Disk: | Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 |
| Memory: | DDR2-800 5-5-5-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 91.28 Beta |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
He's probably using Opteron vs Zeon benchmarks where the Zeon is held back by its FSB when scaling to more CPU's. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to Conroe vs FX62's.peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Yes that's what I'm talking about. For every opteron you add you get more HT channels which can each connect one (or more using tunnel passthrough) I/O chips.
Whilst not in the opteron league, if 4x4 connects the processors by hypertransport as well as the chipset, it is reasonable to assume it works on either two HT links per socket, or splitting the HT between two peers.
Therefore the second AM2 socket can have it's "empty" HT connection talking to a SECOND I/O chipset. For that reason it has POTENTIALLY say double the I/O performance of a single Intel FSB.
Another point about this comparison generally is that these conroe benchmarks are of the EXTREME edition. That is unusual in the property that it has especially extra fast FSB compared to mainstream conroe. Therefore in benchmark comparisons of the non-extreme conroes, the fsb would be slower and may form a constraint which would alter (probably reduce) the relative performance difference between AMD and Intel seen here. The benchmarks will reveal.
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
The EE used was on a 1066 fsb.. same as mainstream Conroe.goz314 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Apples and Oranges... It will also cost vastly more than a Conroe-based system. Even if the performance of an AMD 4x4 platform is significantly higher, Intel would still have a significant edge in a performance/dollar analysis.
4x4 is currently vaporware and it's at least a quarter behind Intel's comparable quad-core processor roadmap. Conroe, on the other hand, is launching next month and will be available for a year before a 4x4 platform even sees the light of day.
Real hardware will always beat an marketing engineer's 'idea' no matter how good that idea looks on paper.
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Can I quote you on this and use it against the hypocrites? BTW, you got a link on where I can buy a Conroe?Josh7289 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Why do you have to buy the processor yourself to know how it performs? Real hardware was used in these benchmarks. AMD's 4x4 does not have any real hardware available yet, so it is vaporware as of now.bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I don't have to buy it but it does need to be available for purchase.Conroe isn't available either. So the vaporware argument could be used here as well.
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
AMD's 4x4 is much more vaporware at this point than Conroe.peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
However 4x4 is NOT a year away it will be here in 2006 from at least three motherboard vendors.
As for pricing criticisms, the AMD processor prices will be lowered WHEN conroe actually ships ;-)
I'm just pointing out that with Intel conroe, you have nowhere to go to scale up without switching to Xeon platforms and they're not particularly cheap.
What a 4x4 AM2 system will let you do is obtain a reasonably fast system initially using ONE fx2, and LATER spend a bit more and you have a MONSTER.
This phased upgrade may suit people who get paid monthly and want to upgrade gradually. AMD 4x4 will provide that upgrade path.
fitten - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
You do realize that you could have been doing this for ages... just buy any of the dual socket S940 motherboards, put one dual core Opteron in it today, then add another at some later time? This 4x4 flailing is just marketing. The only real gain is that it doesn't require registered/ecc memory.The FX line is still going to be expensive AND it's not like there's a ton of software (especially games) that use dual cores... much less quad cores (although this may change with time... but by that time, there'll be even better CPUs out, probably even *real* quad core chips).
Even being an AMD supporter, the 4x4 is not much more than a panic reaction by AMD in response to Core (and its variants). I, for one, will NOT be throwing money into a 4x4 system. At best, it seems like a one-off and a dead-end path before it is even released.