Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Preview: The Desktop Gets a 1333MHz FSB
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 25, 2007 2:57 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
By the end of Summer, Intel's Conroe lineup will have ballooned from a meager five processors at launch to at least different 14 models. The once simple model number system is now well on its way to being the complicated mess that plagued the P4's system before it.
First it was the introduction of the value E4xxx series, then the larger cache Exx20 series, followed by the even cheaper E2xxx CPUs and now the new 1333MHz FSB processors.
The new 1333MHz FSB CPUs will end in the number 50 (e.g. E6750), with the exception of the E6540 which is also a 1333MHz CPU. Although Intel isn't announcing pricing at this point, we don't expect the new 1333MHz FSB CPUs to cost any more than their predecessors; in other words, we expect the E6750 to carry the same price tag as the E6700 does. We've included the post July 22nd price cuts for the unreleased Intel processors in the table below (note that current processors will fall in price as well, although the table reflects present day pricing for currently available CPUs), as well as pricing for chips to be released in Q4:
| CPU | Clock Speed | FSB | L2 Cache | Availability | Pricing |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 | 2.93GHz | 1066 | 4MB | Now | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 | 3.00GHz | 1333 | 4MB | Q3 | $266 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 | 2.66GHz | 1333 | 4MB | Q3 | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 | 2.66GHz | 1066 | 4MB | Now | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 | 2.40GHz | 1066 | 4MB | Now | $224 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 | 2.33GHz | 1333 | 4MB | Q3 | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6540 | 2.33GHz | 1333 | 4MB | Q3 | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 | 2.13GHz | 1066 | 4MB | Now | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 | 2.13GHz | 1066 | 2MB | Now | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 | 1.86GHz | 1066 | 4MB | Now | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 | 1.86GHz | 1066 | 2MB | Now | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 | 2.40GHz | 800 | 2MB | Q4 | $133 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 | 2.20GHz | 800 | 2MB | Q3 | $133 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 | 2.00GHz | 800 | 2MB | Now | $133 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 | 1.80GHz | 800 | 2MB | Now | $113 |
| Intel Pentium E2180 | 2.00GHz | 800 | 1MB | Q4 | $84 |
| Intel Pentium E2160 | 1.80GHz | 800 | 1MB | Now | $84 |
| Intel Pentium E2140 | 1.60GHz | 800 | 1MB | Now | $74 |
Intel sent out samples of its Core 2 Duo E6750 ahead of their scheduled availability as a preview (and probably to jab at its competitor a bit), so the processor we're previewing won't be available for a little while. Intel's internal roadmaps show Q3 as the timeframe to expect its 1333MHz FSB CPUs, but Intel's official statement is that these CPUs will be available "later this summer."
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Keep in mind that AMD's pricing is keeping the company's lineup quite competitive with Intel below $300. You can buy all Socket-AM2 AMD processors for less than $300, resulting in great price/performance from the guys in green.
| CPU | Clock Speed | L2 Cache | Price |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ | 3.0GHz | 1MBx2 | $241 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ | 2.8GHz | 1MBx2 | $188 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ | 2.6GHz | 1MBx2 | $178 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ | 2.6GHz | 512KBx2 | $167 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ | 2.5GHz | 512KBx2 | $136 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ | 2.3GHz | 512KBx2 | $121 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ | 2.1GHz | 512KBx2 | $104 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2.0GHz | 512KBx2 | $83 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ | 1.9GHz | 512KBx2 | $73 |
Note that AMD will respond with its own set of price cuts in late July to keep the landscape competitive after Intel's cost cutting measures.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Hmm that link didn't work out, lemme try again:http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...
ncage - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Ummm everyone wants a new cpu tested for their specific circumstance. Testing the encoding performance you talk of would be a very big task in itself. Think of all the possibilites that could be tested with all the different encoders and even a specific version of an encoder could make a big difference (how parallel the code is in that version). It would be an impossible task for them to make everyone happy. I think anandtech does exactly what they need to do. They test a variety of applications and give you a sense for "General" performance of the cpu. If you look at any cpu review people will say...why didn't you do this test why didn't you do that test. I would just be happy with what you get.Ncage
7oby - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
definitely, however as a starting point, take these:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/26/the_gigaher...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/26/the_gigaher...
http://hardware.thgweb.de/2007/04/09/intel_core_2_...">http://hardware.thgweb.de/2007/04/09/in...reme_qx6...
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html">http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html
[sorry, all more or less from the same site]
Depending on their degree of parallelizm the de-/encoder applications take different advantages of multi cores. Some do not yet scale beyond dual cores. Still a quad core can make perfectly sense:
. even if your particular video encoder can benefit only from two cores, then just throw two videos simultaneously at the quad core. It will scale ;-)
. while encoding there are still resources left for other tasks you might want to do while encoding
. its very likely that future versions of current encoding codecs will scale better with multi cores as soon as those processors become more mainstream and the demand for this requirement raises. Besides - look just as an illustrating example at OpenMP: It may be hard at the beginning to parallize your application, but going from 2 way to 4 way is not that hard anymore. In the simple case of OpenMP you get it for free. Image and video processing scales particularly good with # of processors: you either partition the image into blocks or distribute the different encoding stages.
7oby
TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Ummmm, I couldn't care less how well it performs on a quad-core, since I have absolutely no intention of buying one in the near future. Most people here will do fine with a dual-core, and the market share for quad cores is very low by comparison. Thus, he picked something that makes sense since it will target more people.TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
First of all, why use DDR2 on a 1333 FSB processor? Wouldn't it have been more interesting to show these processors running on DDR3 running at 1333 MHz, instead of DDR2-800 ? It looks like the memory was run at only 800 MHz in both cases, so it's not at all surprising the results weren't enormous, actually it's pretty surprising that the results were as much better than they are. If you ran them each with appropriate memory, you'd probably see the reason for moving to 1333 FSB a lot more clearly. It surely wasn't to run memory at 800 MHz with it.I'm not criticizing doing a DDR2 800 MHz review because it does show something, but making it the only tests misses the point. It's more interesting academically, so should be included, but in terms of real world use, it's not very revealing. I suspect most people wanting these processors will not want to shackle it with DDR2-800 MHz memory. And before cost is brought up, keep in mind the processor will not be out for a few months, and the cost of DDR3 right now is not what it will cost then. Clearly it should fall closer to DDR2 as time goes along, so I think it's worth testing to see the true performance increase of the platform.
coldpower27 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
I don't see why, as Dual Channel DDR2-800 would provide enough bandwidth to feed a theoretical FSB1600 processor let alone FSB1333. I don't see the point in having memory in a 2:1 ratio with the FSB as DDR3-1333 would be providing exactly 2x the memory bandwidth the processor can take advantage of.As well this processor is coming out in a single month, not a few months, so I wouldn't at all expect DDR3 prices to drop all that much.
I expect DDR3 to provide some performance benefits, but nothing earth shattering compared to the DDR2 as your providing more memory bandwidth then the FSB can handle.
mostlyprudent - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
I seem to recall an article here on Anandtech.com about 6-8 months ago that demonstrated a "noticable" performance improvement going from DDR2-667 to DDR2-800 on the Core 2 Duo line of processors. I also wonder if we would see a noticable performance improvement on native 1333 FSB CPU running faster DDR2 or DDR3.coldpower27 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/memory/ddr2/20...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/memory/ddr2/20...I don't see much of a noticable improvement here on Core 2, Core just hasn't shown much signs if any of being dramatically affected by memory speed.
TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Are you serious?Did you read the initial article they wrote on the P35? Then the follow up which showed how much of it was because of the increase in the memory speed. Just about every article on DDR3 shows that it needs higher clock speeds to show real performance. Yet, it wouldn't make any difference here? That makes no sense at all. Besides, if you're getting an improvement by just increasing the FSB and not the memory, that's very interesting indeed. With increased memory speed, you're going to see a pronounced improvement. I'm still surprised there's as much a difference as there was with the same exact memory running at the same speed. Faster DDR3 memory should blow show why Intel went to 1333. DDR2 800 won't.
coldpower27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - link
I am dead serious I don't see much of a performance improvement on the whole. Anyway the results provided on the P35 Chipset cannot be used unless you isolate the variable of memory speed and chipset. So you need to compare DDR2-800 with a 1.33GHZ FSB on the P35 Chipset to DDR3-1333 with a 1.33GHZ FSB on the P35 Chipset to generate any useful data.Not particularly most of the benches show that DDR2-800 is about the level of DDR3-1066 due to it's added latency. DDR3-1333 would be somewhat faster but not any dramatic increase as your trying to paint.
The reason they moved to DDR3/P35 and 1.33GHZ FSB all at the same time (relatively), was because all 3 were needed to generate a worthwhile performance improvement.