Intel's Conroe Resurfaces, Benchmarks Strong

MojoKid writes "Intel has been occasionally leaking performance results of their upcoming Core 2 Duo processor for the desktop, code named Conroe. At this years IDF select members of the press were allowed to get hands-on access to test systems for benchmarking. Now, coincident with this week's Computex show in Taiwan, Intel has seen fit to show us just what their soon to be released CPU can do, yet again. Select press members got together with Intel in New York city for another round of testing with Conroe. HotHardware has a performance showcase posted with scores from a Core 2 Duo E6700 machine and a 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition X6800. The results, compared against the backdrop of an overclocked 2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX-60 system, look very impressive indeed for Intel."

Comments

On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes.

[Visaris]

These benchmarks were run on boxes that Intel built. Even the AMD box was built and configured by Intel. Trusting these benchmarks is abit like trusting a study funded by the oil industry claiming that global warming isn't real. There have been a good number of independant tests of the Conroe and these put the top of the line Conroe around 12% faster on average than a FX-62. The results from the Intel benchmarks show a much bigger performance delta, and to be quite honest, I don't trust them one bit. Somewhere around 15% is much more reasonable.

Re:On Intel built and Intel controlled boxes.

[TheRaven64]

One big difference likely came from the RAM. The AMD box had DDR400, while the Intel box had DDR2-800. DDR2 has a greater latency in terms of cycles than DDR, but when the DDR2 is twice the speed of the DDR then this disappears in absolute terms and you are left with the RAM in the Intel box having about the same latency, but twice the throughput.

Having said that, all of the benchmarks run were publicly available. There's nothing stopping you from configuring an AMD box yourself and seeing what numbers you get. In fact, I'm slightly surprised that the review site didn't do this.

Re:Core 2 Extreme

[cnettel]

The difference is that there is no trivial way for an end-user to dispute those performance numbers. It's even out of reach for several hardware sites (and there are real differences between different production sets of the same panel). Compare this to CPU performance: ANYONE will be able to run these benchmarks in two months. Anyone can run them today on the AMD and NetBurst side to get reference data. If the Intel results differ a lot at actual release, hell will break loose and Intel would be really out of touch to think that they can succeed. Mainstream users won't care anyway, and the technical users would certainly disprove of the methods.

So, Intel could do this, but they are probably quite aware of the consequences.

Re:Osborne Effect

[zakath]

Intel is suffering from the Osborne Effect. They have hyped their new products (which are comming in July/August of 2006) so much that no one wants their current parts.

I don't think Intel is suffering from the Osborne Effect. People don't want their current products because the competition has a better offering. The only option Intel really has is to hype future products because it has become common knowledge that their current line up can't compete with AMD. The hype you're hearing is more of an effort to stop the exodus to AMD, it's yet to be seen if that will work.

Intel is selling many parts at a loss

...and you know this how? Are you privy to the details of Intel's cost/unit? Yes, they've cut prices but they may have had plenty of room to do so and still make money.