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.

[kscguru]

Is widely known to be hardly faster and significantly less mature/stable

Funny that I've been watching AM2 carefully for the past month, and only agree on "less mature". AM2 is not faster by itself, but it does open the door to DDR2 memory. Which means Intel went out of their way to compare an AMD on DDR memory with an Intel chip on DDR2, when Intel could very easily have set up the "equivalent" AMD system on DDR2. When they deliberately don't match memory technologies, I'm suddenly very suspicious of Intel's benchmark.

My socket-AM2 system has been stable - except for Tomb Raider, which does seem buggy (and I'm blaming graphics drivers for that). nForce4 is a buggy chipset period, I don't see how that is any advantage at all.

I expect Intel to jump ahead with their Core design, and then AMD to make up much of the difference with K8L later this year. But on the server side, AMD is going to eat Intel's lunch for a long while yet.

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.