Intel Penryn Performance Preview: The Fastest gets Faster
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 18, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
First off we'll start with the results we ran ourselves under Intel's supervision. Intel set up three identical systems, one based on a Core 2 Extreme X6800 (dual core, 2.93GHz/1066MHz FSB), one based on a Wolfdale processor (Penryn, dual core, 3.20GHz/1066MHz FSB) and one based on Yorkfield (Penryn, quad core, 3.33GHz/1333MHz FSB).
The modified BadAxe 2 board; can you spot the mod?
Can't find it? It's under that blue heatsink
The processors were plugged into a modified Intel BadAxe2 motherboard, with the modification being necessary to support Penryn. Each system had 2GB of DDR2-800 memory and a GeForce 8800 GTX. All of our tests were run under Windows XP.
Wolfdale - 2 cores
Yorkfield - 4 cores
The Cinebench 9.5 test is the same one we run in our normal CPU reviews, with the dual core Penryn (Wolfdale) scoring about 20% faster than the dual core Conroe. Keep in mind that the Wolfdale core is running at a 9.2% higher clock speed, but even if Cinebench scaled perfectly with clock speed there's still at least a 10% increase in performance due to the micro-architectural improvements found in Penryn.
Next up was Intel's Half Life 2 Lost Coast benchmark which was run with the following settings:
| Setting | |
| Model Detail | High |
| Texture Detail | High |
| Shader Detail | High |
| Water Detail | Reflect World |
| Shadow Detail | High |
| Texture Filtering | Trilinear |
| HDR | Full |
Half Life 2 performance at a very CPU bound 1024 x 768 has Wolfdale just under 19% faster than Conroe. Once again, clock speed does play a part here but we'd expect at least a 10% increase in performance just due to the advancements in Penryn.
At 1600 x 1200 the performance difference shrinks to 10.6%, still quite respectable:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
What, no comments Goty?Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Nope, I agree with him. I'm not a blind fanboy like many would like to think. I'm actually quite rational in my arguments.AdamK47 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
32MB of L1 cache... nice.Souka - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
yeah....need to replace KB with B on the L1 cache value...still makes the number look big, but uses small unit.Or how about just posing cache size in the industry standard KB units
coldpower27 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Probably borked no CPU-Z part.vailr - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Re: "Chipset Driver 8.1.1.1010"There's a beta Intel Inf driver Version 8.4.0.1010:
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20chipse...">http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20chipse...
Also a newer CPU-Z version 1.39:
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php">http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
Actually, there's a CPU-Z version 1.39.2 out, but it's not posted on their web site.
KeypoX - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
"Or how about just posing cache size in the industry standard KB units"I think you mean kB kilobyte? Or did you mean kelvin byte KB?
Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
People are posting how amazing this looks when in all actuality, it's pretty much nthing more than a speed bump. Looking at the results, Anand is guessing at a 10% performance increase when not considering the clockspeed. I can account for the other 9% right now: higher FSB, more cache. Penryn is just an evolutionary step, not revolutionary like the first Conroe CPUs and not really all that exciting IMHO.erwos - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
If they can get the price down to $300-$400 for the quad-core variants, that'll be advancement enough. I desperately need to move our DVDs to H.264 or VC-1 to save space, but there's no way I'm paying $1000 for a quad-core CPU to do the task.At this point, I'm honestly desperate enough to grab the cheapie quad-core Xeons and overclock them, expensive motherboard or not.
coldpower27 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Wait for the old Kentsfield to have it's Q3 price drop to $266.