Intel Penryn Performance Preview: The Fastest gets Faster
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 18, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Penryn Performance at 3.33GHz in Beijing
Next up are Intel's Penryn benchmark results revealed at IDF Beijing. The system configuration is a little different, as both Penryn systems run at 3.33GHz and the systems are running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. The exact config is listed below:
| Test System Configuration | Wolfdale 3.33GHz | Yorkfield 3.33GHz | Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (2.93GHz) |
| CPU | Pre-production dual core Penryn 3.33GHz/1333MHz FSB 6MB L2 |
Pre-production quad core Penryn 3.33GHz/1333MHz 12MB L2 |
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 quad core 2.93GHz/1066MHz 8MB L2 |
| Motherboard | Pre-production BadAxe2 975X |
Pre-production BadAxe2 975X |
BadAxe2 975X |
| BIOS | Pre-production BIOS |
Pre-production BIOS |
Pre-production BIOS |
| Chipset Driver |
|
8.1.1.1010 |
8.1.1.1010 |
| Video Card | GeForce 8800 GTX |
||
| Video Driver | NVIDIA 100.65 |
||
| Memory | 2 x 1GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-15 |
||
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.10 320GB |
||
And now the results:
| Benchmark | Wolfdale 3.33GHz | Yorkfield 3.33GHz | Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (2.93GHz) |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro CPU (score) : | 3061 |
4957 |
4070 |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro Overall (score) : | 11015 |
11963 |
11123 |
| Mainconcept H.264 Encoder (seconds) : | 119 |
73 |
89 |
| Cinebench R9.5 (CPU test) | 1134 |
1935 |
1549 |
| Cinebench R10 Beta (CPU test) | 7045 |
13068 |
10416 |
| HL2 Lost Coast Build 2707 (fps) : | 210 |
210 |
153 |
| DivX 6.6 Alpha w/ VirtualDub 1.7.1 (seconds) | 22 |
18 |
38 |
For easier comparison we took the two quad-core chips (Yorkfield vs. Kentsfield) and looked at performance scaling between the two:
| Benchmark | Yorkfield Performance Advantage |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro CPU (score) : | 21.8% |
| 3DMark '06 V1.1.0 Pro Overall (score) : | 7.6% |
| Mainconcept H.264 Encoder (seconds) : | 18.0% |
| Cinebench R9.5 (CPU test) | 24.9% |
| Cinebench R10 Beta (CPU test) | 25.5% |
| HL2 Lost Coast Build 2707 (fps) : | 37.3% |
| DivX 6.6 Alpha w/ VirtualDub 1.7.1 (seconds) | 111% |
The Yorkfield system runs at a 13.6% higher clock speed than the Kentsfield system giving it an inherent advantage, but that's clearly not all that's making it faster. Half-Life 2 went up an expected 21.8% (we're assuming that Intel ran these numbers at 1024 x 768), and Cinebench saw a 25% increase in performance.
The DivX 6.6 test is particularly strong for Intel because it is using an early alpha version of DivX with support for SSE4. With SSE4 support, the quad-core Yorkfield processor ends up being more than 50% faster than Kentsfield, which bodes very well for Penryn if applications like DivX can bring SSE4 support in time for launch.
Final Words
Obviously we'll reserve final judgments on Penryn for our official review of the CPU, but these initial results look very promising. We would expect to see clock for clock Penryn vs. Conroe improvements to be in the 5 - 10% range at minimum depending on the application. Factor in higher clock speeds and you can expect our CPU performance charts to shift up by about 20% by the end of this year.
Intel has shown its cards, now it's time for AMD to respond with those long overdue Barcelona tests...
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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.