Intel's Core 2 Desktop Processors Tested

Steve Kerrison writes "It's early morning here in the UK, but that doesn't stop us from being around to see the launch of Conroe and friends, Intel's newest desktop chips. Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests. Now that's bound to get the fanboy blood pumping, right? We've also taken a look at a pre-built system that's powered by the Extreme X6800 CPU, along with an nForce 4 SLI chipset. As you'd expect, it's quick."

Comments

Re:Kyle Bennet seems to disagree...

[androvsky]

You have to be carefull with the HardOCP benchmarks. I only read the first several pages, but they're doing their usual "real-world" stuff... which means leaning on the video card to do most of the work. Naturally, CPU differences aren't going to show up much here. I appreciate them doing something to put a real-world perspective on things, but what I read doesn't change the fact that the Core2Duos (I hate typing that) are really stinking fast. But playing games that do most of the work on the video card won't matter, big surprise... it really looks like a clever yet still desperate attempt to be a raving AMD fanboy and prop them up.

Uh-oh, rant ahead, I tried to avoid it, I swear... ;)

I am a raving AMD fanboy, but I'm a raving AMD fanboy because they've made the best CPUs for a long time. They also have a wonderful motherboard architecture that makes very high bandwidth applications much easier to deal with. I find myself wishing I could plug the Core2Duos into an AMD motherboard... on-chip motherboard controllers would help Intel also. Ah, what do I care, I want to see a real motherboard built around a Cell, the overall system bandwidth is almost as exciting as the cpu. Too bad that means buying everything from Rambus... :(

Re:Kyle Bennet seems to disagree...

[riprjak]

Responding to anonymous... I must be mad.

But your point is accurate. Gaming is mostly GPU limited; my gaming system, an s939 amd64x2 3800+ with a pair of old GPU's (7800GTX 256MB) achieves equal or better gaming results than all of these.

I suppose the point is are such prices for CPUs currently justified when they wont have much impact on user experience?

No doubt the new entry level core 2 duo's seem to be the upgrade of choice to maintain near cutting edge; but a high end GPU seems to be a wiser spend than a new CPU for gamers.

As for video encoding et al, HardOCP had the same results in their "real world" testing as others, but at least they make an effort to simulate the way the "average" person might use the things; either way, I'll reserve judgement here until I see some 64bit results, since encoding in native 64bit will be the telling tale IMHO.

In any case, I think we are reaching the point of dimishing returns, a year old 2GHz processer already rips music as fast as the drive can deliver it, already transcodes video as fast as the drives can burn it etc... GPUs control gaming... It is nice to see intel returning to the game in a serious fashion and no doubt this will have positive results for the consumer if AMD try to match price performance. I was mainly trying to point out that the "benchmarks" aren't nescessarily useful in describing the performance of these beasts in operation.

err!
jak

That's almost always the case

[Sycraft-fu]

The processor is generally the thing I upgrade the least because it simply has the least increase in demands. Video cards you can upgrade once a year and not be doing it too often given the advances they have. Throwing lots of RAM at your system is also a good idea. Processor? Well for gaming and most apps it just really isn't that big a deal. Get a good dual core of prett much any design you like and call it good. Hell if all you are worried about id gaming and not doing things in the background while you game get a good single core, games still don't make any use of a second core to speak of.

I moved from a P4 2.4GHz to a Pentium D 2.8GHz when I did a system overhaul not too long ago. Why such a minor processor upgrade, you might wonder? Well because the processor wasn't the issue. That 2.4 was plenty fast, for games at least. The graphics card was the issue and I wanted PCIe which my board didn't support. Had the board had the same socket, I would have just kept the processor. It was fine (though because of teh audio work I do I'm appreciating the dual core). I just got a dual core because they weren't that much more expensive and it has geek appeal to me.

The real useful thing, in my book, is that the Core 2s run cooler. Current processors have tended towards too hot. AMD is much better than Intel but even they put out quite a bit of heat at the high end. It sounds like the Core 2s are quite efficient for the performance they give. That's good because I value a quiet system and frankly, it's as good as I'm willing to make it at this point cooling wise. I'm not going water cooling and there's just no more air cooling I can do short of making the fans speed up.

I don't think I'd recommend these as an upgrade to anyone who already has a dual core AMD or Intel system. Unless you are doing simulations or rendering or something I just can't see the minor increase as worth it. Certianly not for games. However if you need to upgrade anyhow, these look like winners.

Re:Great news for the low end systems

[Ash-Fox]

Quote from the article: "Intel, then, has moved the goalposts as far as consumer-level CPUs are concerned. Its low-end Core 2 Duo parts are more than a match for anything that has come before." Thus, Intel raises the capabilities on the low end systems. This is great. But besides gaming, are there anything needing such performance boost?

• Google earth
• Windows Vista
• Sun Java
• Flash (Hell my athlon 64 chokes on some some flash content)
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe premiere
• h264 decoders/encoders
• XGL compiz

... I'm sure you can come up with plenty of other examples.

Re:first PC's?

[gfxguy]

I agree with you. Way back when, in my first years in college (mid 80s), I had an Atari 130XE. A math teacher asked me if I had a PC, and I said "Yes." I was very annoyed when she berated me in front of the class, explaining that a PC meant "IBM PC".

So I stoop up and I asked "So you don't think a computer for personal use is a personal computer? So what should I call it? An egg timer?", and thankfully got a lot of chuckles from the other nerds in the class.

So she explained that PCs were used for things like word processing and spreadsheets. "I have a word processor and a spreadsheet."

She was like "oh, I didn't you could get those on an Atari."

I loved my Atari (in a strictly platonic way, of course).