Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Application Performance using SYSMark 2004 SE
We'll kick off our look at general application performance with SYSMark 2004 SE and as always, and we'll look at the overall score as well as the scores in each of the two suites - Internet Content Creation and Office productivity.
As we saw in our last preview of Intel's Core 2 Extreme processor, it posted SYSMark scores that were well beyond anything either AMD or Intel had been able to deliver in the past. With the final version of Core 2 silicon in our hands and a more stable/tweaked platform, we got even better numbers out of Conroe:
At the high end, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 was just under 36% faster than the Athlon 64 FX-62. In fact, even the $316 E6600 was around 18% faster than AMD's fastest. To add even more insult to injury the slowest Core 2 Duo in the test, the 1.86GHz E6300 is barely slower than AMD's fastest Athlon 64 X2.
The old Intel lineup of Pentium D processors is truly an embarrassment. Only the Extreme Edition 965 is remotely competitive and even then it can barely outperform the $183 E6300.
Drilling down into the SYSMark scores we've got the overall ICC results, which honestly are not much different than the overall scores we saw above. The Core 2 Extreme X6800 holds a 29% performance advantage over the FX-62 and once again, and the E6600 is able to outperform AMD's best by over 8%.
Intel's Core 2 performance domination continues in the Office Productivity portion of SYSMark 2004, with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 maintaining a 42.5% performance advantage over the FX-62. This time around, even the E6300 manages to remain competitive with the FX-62. This is Intel's new $183 part offering performance equal to that of AMD's $1,000 flagship FX processor; it's going to take a lot for AMD to recover from this deficit.
The individual SYSMark 2004 SE scores are graphed below if you're interested. The data is used in calculating the overall scores we've already discussed above:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
202 Comments
View All Comments
ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Hmm... some more investigating.Firefox leaves space for the images, so I right-clicked and sure enough, I've got a link. "View Image" to look at a single .png, and I get a white blank screen (properties of this particular image says 446px by 654px, 0.04kb in size).
JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I'm using Firefox without trouble. Possibly some firewall setting is getting in the way? We had a few brief issues earlier tonight, but that only lasted a few minutes (and we're not sure what happened). If IE and FF both lack images, it sounds like something outside of browser. One note is that I think our image server (images.anandtech.com) blocks access to images if you don't allow the referring URL to be passed along. Meaning, if you were to get the URL of an image and paste that directly into a browser, the image would show up as a 1x1 blank file. Not sure if that affects the graphs as well or not.ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
It was the referer info being blocked that was doing it, kinda annoying. Thanks a million.JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Norton is the devil, I swear. They were great when Peter Norton was actually involved, but now it's just a name, and every release gets worse IMO. Norton Internet Security 2002 (2001?) was good; 2003 became a bit worse. 2005 was garbage and I never tried it again. I don't even run software firewall/anti-virus anymore. I've got a hardware firewall, surf with Firefox, password protect my PCs, and don't open stupid email messages. That only works because I'm the only one on the network/PCs, of course. :)ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, I run an old corporate edition from maybe 2001-2002 because I can't stand the fat of the newer releases. And it's just worked well for me otherwise, I've got a newer edition sitting around in some pile of disks in some closet, but I tried it, hated it, went back.I've got a hardware firewall, software firewall, AV, surf w/Firefox, anti-Spyware, AND try not to do anything stupid -- I got'cha beat =P
ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Hmm...I see all the ads on the page (newegg, zipzoomfly, thermaltake, crucial, etc.) that seem to be flash. I also see the images for the header of the page (the Anandtech logo at the top of the page), but it's just the images in the review that are invisible.
Hmm... I told the firewall (Norton) to lower my protection, and nothing [either browser]. I'll give it a stab disabled.
*sign* Okay, charts worked w/o Norton running... (even on minimum protection, they wouldn't come up). I guess I'm off to delve into what setting is going to be doing that.
Gary Key - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
If you are using Opera 9 or 8, did you turn on "refferer" logging under tools - quick preferences or the advanced - network option?xFlankerx - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Excellent article, by far the most detailed released yet. Yea, the E6400 was a rather important part since it's supposed to be equal to AMD's flagship FX-62, but its easy enough to figure out how it would perform from the other processors' performance.As for Conroe availability; 25% of Intel's total output should be more than enough. 20% of Intel's manufacturing capacity equals 100% of AMD's. If there is no shortage of AMD processors, 25% of Intel's total output should be more than enough to supply the market with enough processors?
DigiTimes also reported that Intel will be charging everyone roughly the same price for the processors. Dell might not get the processors for half-off after all.
That said, these processors are amazing. By far the greatest thing since the Athlon 64 almost 5 years ago. Fun stuff.
mikaela - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
yes, well-written. i also love the images provided here. thanks i can use the info here to write my essay college essay requirementsSuraj - Friday, October 20, 2006 - link
Great article. How did they overclock the e6600? Did they use the same parts listed in "The test" ?