Intel's Conroe Previewed and Benchmarked

DrFishstik writes "Anandtech has a few preliminary benchmarks on Intel's new Conroe architecture. From the article: 'As far as we could tell, there was nothing fishy going on with the benchmarks or the install. Both systems [AMD 2.8Ghz OC and Conroe] were clean and used the latest versions of all of the drivers.'"

Comments

Shock news.

[supersnail]

Next years Intel chip will run faster than last years AMD chip!

Re:Shock news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. You should have said: "this year's second fastest Intel chip will be way faster than AMD's chip which will be released in June 2006".

Let's look at the facts:
- They benchmarked 2.667GHz Conroe against 2.8GHz Athlon64 FX (FX-60 with 200MHz overclock)
- 2.8GHz Athlon64 FX will be released in June
- 2.667GHz Conroe will be released somewhere in Q3 2006
- Conroe Extreme editition clocked to at least 3.0GHz will be released somewhere in Q3 2006 (there have been rumours about 3.33GHz version)

Based on those benchmarks, fastest Athlon64 FX won't have a chance against 3.0GHz Conroe XE (which will have also faster FSB compared to Conroe benchmarked here), even if you into account that Athlon64 FX will soon support DDR2.

Re:Shock news.

[Saven Marek]

THe simple fact remains that intel needed to do these tests at all, side by side. That's an admission on their part that AMD is beating them and beating them hard. I've heard AMD has some new stuff in the pipeline that'll put conroe out of its misery once and for all.

Given Intel's release date fiasco's it'll probably come out before conroe too.

Re:Shock news.

[timeOday]

Also, the forthcoming AMD processors are a new core architecture and will support faster RAM with an onboard memory controller.

The review did address that, as best they could:

While we're still comparing to Socket-939 and only using RD480, it does seem very unlikely that AMD would be able to make up this much of a deficit with Socket-AM2 and RD580. Especially looking at titles like F.E.A.R. where Conroe's performance advantage averages over 40%, it looks like Intel's confidence has been well placed.

As for your assertion that MHz don't mean anything, that's just wrong. Within a single architecture, speed is nearly proportional to MHz. For a 2.66 GHz Intel to crush a 2.8 GHz AMD so convincingly, does not mean good things for AMD if the Intel can easily reach 3 GHz. It means AMD would have to be at about 3.8 GHz to keep pace: 2.8*(3/2.66)*1.2 = 3.7895 assuming these benchmarks show a 20% lead for Intel.

The real hope for AMD here is that these results won't hold to other benchmarks in general. Apparently this set of benchmarks was handpicked by Intel, so that's almost certainly the case to some degree.

Re:Shock news.

[fitten]

The things that AMD has said that they have are F, G, and H revisions of the K8 core (the core that the Athlon64, Turion, Sempron64s, and Opterons are based on) which, other than DDR2 support, not much more information is available. There is another revision called the K8L which will supposedly have 2x the FPU units for about a 50% gain in FPU performance. These will most likely be HPC blade Opterons or some such.

DDR2-800 support, which is the known upgrade, basically adds bandwidth to a chip that isn't bandwidth starved as it is. Current speculation is that the new DDR2-800 Athlon64s will show up to a 10% performance increase on extreme bandwidth benchmarks (synthetics and HPC crunchers, for example).

THe simple fact remains that intel needed to do these tests at all, side by side. That's an admission on their part that AMD is beating them and beating them hard.

Intel has publicly stated (admitted) this already. This demo is to show that the chips they have planned for Q3'06 release (speculation is that they will be delivering machines based on it in July which is the very beginning of Q3, which is only 4 months away) perform well.

By the way, if speculation is that machines will be selling in July, this would imply that the chips are in manufacturing even as we speak. This means that Apple is most likely to announce availability of the new Intel based Power Macs around this time, as well and the various benchmark sites to have their hands on 'pre-production' machines in two to three months tops. We'll be able to see the real story then.

The only announced things from AMD even remotely in this time frame (specifically July and Q3'06) are the AM2 socket for DDR2-800 and a speed bump of the FX-62 to 2.8GHz (which is the equivalent of the overclocked part in the demo). Given that DDR2-800 is expected to be a 10% speed bump at most in most cases and that Conroe will be available at 3GHz (if not higher as rumored - 3.33GHz), I predict (a rather easy prediction to make) that AMD will be playing catch-up for once in the past few years.

Wait and see

[xming]

As pointed out by Ars http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060307-6334 .html I think we should wait and see for the more objective benchmarks. Anyway 2006 will be a good year for CPUs

Re:Wait and see

[imsabbel]

That ars technica article is denial at its best.
"intel faster? CANNOT BE!!!111"
Sorry, i am as much an AMD fanboy as anybody (hey, their stock financed the car i am driving right now), but besides dual core and adapting sse2/3, VERY little has been done to beef up the aging k8 core (which is byitself also little more than a k7 with on die memory controller).
In a race, standing still will only lead to a loss.

Amd just now is in a position where their flagship is in fact a 7 year old core design, they are one die-shrink behind, and their cache technology is about 4 years behind intel (they need twice as much space per Mbyte cache on the same process size, plus are a factor of 4 slower).

Its time for a _real_ K9 just in the same way intel needed something new after netburst.

Re:Wait and see

[Bert64]

And Intel's new chips are based on the Pentium-M, which is still heavily based on the Pentium-PRO that dates from the early 90s...
Intel's attempt to produce a new architecture (netburst/p4) resulted in an underperforming overheating mess, so they're going back to one that works.

Re:Wait and see

[hattig]

The K8 core is as similar to the K7 core as the conroe core is to a PIII core.

I.e., at first glance there are similarities which can lead to the obvious thought that the K8 core is just a K7 core with memory controller, but actually they're completely revamped, overhauled, enhanced and redone.

I agree that it is time for AMD to get a "K9" out of the door as the K8 as it is won't compete against Intel's offerings unless AMD somehow get 3.6GHz out of 65nm at launch (which is extremely unlikely). Of course, K8L will probably put AMD back into the lead in terms of floating point anyway, but integer is going to be very weak.

Unless AMD is sandbagging - but that's a faint hope for even the most ardent AMD fanboy. I think they miscalculated Intel this time around.

Which of AMD or Intel has the most fangirls?

Re:Wait and see

[mooingyak]

ars technica != Anandtech

Good summary of the Anandtech article though.

A better competetion

[poeidon1]

With AMD taking the performance lead now and Intel gearing up for getting the top performer position again, I think we are going to see nicer battles now, much nicer than the GHz ones with AMD now much better in its market position and its new fabs.

AMD Processor Model Unknown

[Bert64]

Did anyone else notice that the AMD motherboard didn't detect the processor correctly?

Re:AMD Processor Model Unknown

[Malenfrant]

Yes, exactly. They tested it against a chip which is not listed as being as fast, overclocked so they can pretend it is as fast. Big surprise it didn't perform as well

Re:AMD Processor Model Unknown

[iainl]

The AMD was overclocked to the timings of the one that won't officially be released until June - unsurprisingly, AMD won't let them have a pre-production chip to demonstrate how their one is even faster.

Re:The Conclusion

[mtenhagen]

Well the "new" intels are faster then the "old" amd's. This not suprising Intel has plenty of cash and had to come out with a cpu faster then amd.

The big question will be how will this compare to the next generation of AMD cpu's. And what will the price be. If amd will be faster per dollar the rise of amd will continue.

What about RAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

The AMD system used 1GB of DDR400 running at 2-2-2/1T timings, while the Intel system used 1GB of DDR2-667 running at 4-4-4.

and:

Intel told us to expect an average performance advantage of around 20% across all benchmarks.

Did they really expect around 20% better performance, while using 66% faster RAM? That seems at least unfair to me... Especially the encoding tests, whose results depend heavily on RAM access.

Re:The Conclusion

[Kjella]

by the time this new intel is out, AMD should already be well and truly released. probably also embedding themselves more in Dell's good books and taking more than 80% of the market. Intel are fighting the loosing battle.

1) AMD has something like 20% of the processor market, including OEMs. They couldn't deliver 80% of the market in many years even if the market wanted it.
2) AMD has no major process/architecture shifts between now and Conroe's release.
3) The AMD chip was already overclocked (but then again, they may have gotten a golden sample from Intel).
4) It's losing, not loosing.

TrustedComputing Inside (TM)

[Alsee]

Code-named Conroe... blah blah blah ...feature "security" is expected to be discussed in the framework of a technology that is based on standards set by the Trusted Computing Group and carries the code-name "LaGrande."

Intel's new chips have a Trust Enforcer chip embedded inside the CPU itself. Each chip features a unique serial number, DRM enforcement, Sealed Storage to prohibit you from reading your own files on your hard drive, and Remote Attestation to act as a spy on your computer to log your hardware and what software you run and to securely transmit that spy report to other people over the internet. The chip has your computer's master key locked inside, and you are forbidden to know your master key to control your own computer. Other models of the Trust chip are boobytrapped to self destruct if you attempt to get you key out, and I'd wager these CPUs are boobytrapped to self destruct as well.

Evil as hell.

-

Re:TrustedComputing Inside (TM)

[Kjella]

So... let's take the headcount:

1) Non-geeks who'll buy a new PC not caring and/or approving of whatever "security features" the salesmen told them about.
2) Geeks who'll just bite the bullet and run TCPA/Windows anyway.
3) Geeks who'll be on the TCPA/OS X-x86 platform.
4) Geeks that'll use Linux or turn off TCPA, but will still want new and faster processors.
5) Geeks who won't buy the 'evil as hell' processor.

Oh yeah, Intel is doomed now.

4) is the final nail in the coffin. It's like trying to stop people from buying an iPod which they plan to fill up with their CD collection, because it could also play DRM-protected AACs. That battle is already lost. It only remains to see what content will succeed at DRM, and which will be rejected by the consumers. I'm not too hopeful...

impressive benchmarks

[bleughbleugh]

yep, impressive, BUT, more important than benchmarks for most Bang per buck by that I mean, if the AMD processor is 50% less than the Intel one, but only 20% slower, AMD will win it for me :-)

Isn't that highly dangerous??

[Namarrgon]

their stock financed the car i am driving right now

Man, there's gotta be some pretty heavy laws about posting on Slashdot while in control of a moving vehicle.

Re:Wait and see (faked tests)

[FirstOne]

Something isn't right, from the screenshot.

..Using an award bios last copyrighted in 2003 for AMD's latest FX-60 chip (2006)..
..Notice how the AMD Processor isn't correctly id'd in the Bios post.
..Even though.. DFI has distributed a new bios version to suport FX60..

.. This thread indicates that there is some video defect in RD480 chipset..

These red flags indicate that something is very fishy and Intel's results should not be trusted... (rigged test)

Re:Wait and see (faked tests)

[FirstOne]

Corrected link to DFI bios update.. (using ATI's RD480) chipset..

Notice items.. 1, 2, and 10..