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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.'"
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
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.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
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.
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
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.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Man, there's gotta be some pretty heavy laws about posting on Slashdot while in control of a moving vehicle.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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)
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.