Gaming Performance using Oblivion

At Low Quality defaults in Oblivion (800 x 480 resolution), we finally see a performance difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. In our Bruma benchmark the performance advantage is 16.1%, while the dungeon benchmark drops down to 10.5%. Given the number of NPCs present in towns, it appears the CPU has plenty of work to keep it busy.

Gaming Performance - Oblivion

Gaming Performance - Oblivion

Changing the settings to high quality results in a significant drop in frame rate and equalizes performance between the two CPUs. For all intents and purposes, unless you've got a laptop with a very high end GPU (or pair of GPUs), Core 2 Duo is no faster than Core Duo for gaming.

Gaming Performance using F.E.A.R. & Rise of Legends Power Consumption
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  • juanpoh - Friday, August 4, 2006 - link

    Looking at http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentiumm/i...">Intel Pentium M link, only 915 and 855 chipset is supported. However 945 chipset is listed as supported in http://www.intel.com/products/processor/celeron_m/...">Intel Celeron M link.
  • jaybuffet - Friday, August 4, 2006 - link

    I have the nx9420 notebook with the 945pm chipset... i was on hp support yesterday, and they said they would not support upgrading the CPU.. does that mean i am SOL because they wont upgrade the BIOS to support it?
  • Pjotr - Friday, August 4, 2006 - link

    Please correct the percentage numbers on http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

    "17.5% increase in performance" -> "17.5 % less time used" OR "21.3 % increaase in performance"

    Same mistake for all other time based benchmarks.
  • shecknoscopy - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    Given the nearly identical architectures of the desktop Conroes and the new Merom chips - how well do all of you think the two would stack up in a direct side-by-side comparison? This is open to blatant conjecture, of course, as the necessary hardware to <b>really</b> make a single-variable experiment isn't out there. But for those of us considering mobile-on-desktop options, how much of a performance cut would we see jumping from a Conroe to a Merom?
  • IntelUser2000 - Saturday, August 5, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Given the nearly identical architectures of the desktop Conroes and the new Merom chips - how well do all of you think the two would stack up in a direct side-by-side comparison? This is open to blatant conjecture, of course, as the necessary hardware to <b>really</b> make a single-variable experiment isn't out there. But for those of us considering mobile-on-desktop options, how much of a performance cut would we see jumping from a Conroe to a Merom?


    Intel mentioned something about having different prefetchers that match the market, meaning Woodcrest's Prefetchers are fit for workstation/server, Conroe for desktop, Merom for mobile applications(performance/battery life).

    If you look at Core Extreme X6800 vs. Core 2 Duo E6700 benchmarks, you can see that in some reviews the differences are greater than the 267MHz clock difference(10% clock difference). Maybe Core Extreme has superior prefetchers to the Core 2 Duos, giving advantage in select few applications.
  • Sunrise089 - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    This was the exact question I just signed on to ask....so I await and answer as well.
  • shecknoscopy - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    Woohoo! Great minds think alike, eh? Also, so do ours!
  • JackPack - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    Which stepping did you use in this test? B1?
  • EagleEye - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    I think the asus barebones configuration is mislabeled in this article. The s96j has the WXGA 1280x 800 screen while the z96j has the WSXGA 1680x 1050 screen. They either had an s96j or the native resolution is wrong as they stated it.
  • Kalessian - Thursday, August 3, 2006 - link

    I noticed that, too.

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