HEXUS.reviews :: WORLD EXCLUSIVE! INTEL CONROE BENCHMARKED

[DR]

There will be Q965 and other chipsets supporting it - I know NV and ATI are both delivering supporting SKUs

[sawyen]

Okay, lets do some maths based on the speculative price..

say E6700 for USD530 will translate to.. (according to XE anyways)
£281
then add in 17.5% VAT,
£330
then throw in the rev 304 Bad Axe 975 board..
£150
This means a platform move would cost £480 not including DDR2 memory..

Now, lets do the maths for AMD's offering, 5000+ will be roughly (from Scan)
£486
then add in £100 for an SLI capable board
that a whopping £590...

What was AMD thinking..

[directhex]

are existing i975 boards likely to support conroe with nothing more than a BIOS update? i have an asus p5wdg2-ws that could do with a cooler CPU

[atomicpineapple]

are existing i975 boards likely to support conroe with nothing more than a BIOS update? i have an asus p5wdg2-ws that could do with a cooler CPU

No they cant. They require VRM11 compliant hardware for CPU power regulation, current boards are only VRM10.1. Asus will release new revisions of their current boards wit hthe updated PWM hardware however current revisions will not be able to support conroe. AT least thats the picture at this time.

[directhex]

No they cant. They require VRM11 compliant hardware for CPU power regulation, current boards are only VRM10.1. Asus will release new revisions of their current boards wit hthe updated PWM hardware however current revisions will not be able to support conroe. AT least thats the picture at this time.

seems it works with the 1.03 revision of the board, but not 1.02. i wouldn't mind, but 0.01 is a piddling little version number jump for a major cpu generation gap

[atomicpineapple]

Indeed, I see confusion occuring. Hopefully retailers will make it very obvious which boards support conroe when they arrive in stock

[DR]

You need a rev 304 board to run Conroe due to the Voltage regs - all shipping boards should be compliant now

[sawyen]

You need a rev 304 board to run Conroe due to the Voltage regs - all shipping boards should be compliant now

well, the problem occurs when the retailer fails to inform whether the board they're having actually have the rev that supports Conroe..

Every board will have the 975X sticker on it, and when say I buy one.. arrives tomorrow and its an older revision.. I'll have to pay the extra postage to get it back and say I dont want it..

[DR]

well, the problem occurs when the retailer fails to inform whether the board they're having actually have the rev that supports Conroe..

Every board will have the 975X sticker on it, and when say I buy one.. arrives tomorrow and its an older revision.. I'll have to pay the extra postage to get it back and say I dont want it..

Of course, and this is a challenge which will be faced, I have a 975 in this rig, but I know its 303 and not 304 so I can't run Conroe.

I am sure there are bigger issues faced than worrying about board revs...

[yamangman]

There is so many benchmarks which we can do - trouble is we have a suite and only so much time. We have to make sure we do the best spectrum of testing possible to enable us to give you a piece of editorial with buying advice/allowing you to make a decision

Yea that was my point.

[DeathByDuke]

AM2 is nothing more than obeying the whining souls who want DDR2, and for marketing purposes (look! Intel has DDR2 AMD only has DDR1! how lame!) same people they suckered up to with 939 cos they bemoaned the 'loss' of dual channel memory after nforce2.

The real compettition will be in whatever K8 revisions they do, and K8L.

DDR2 is also looking like a waste of time considering its inefficiencies on utilising bandwidth (50% vs 90%) and the high latencies crippling it against half speed DDR1.

On the bright side, non AM2 gets cheaper as a result!

[DeathByDuke]

well, the problem occurs when the retailer fails to inform whether the board they're having actually have the rev that supports Conroe..

Every board will have the 975X sticker on it, and when say I buy one.. arrives tomorrow and its an older revision.. I'll have to pay the extra postage to get it back and say I dont want it..

gotta love intel and their 'new core, same socket, new mobo!' strategy :/

[DR]

eh? I can't see that strategy with this one at all - 975 was never planned to support Conroe they have enabled it...

... AMD are *great with the fact they had drop in single to dual core Opterons and 939 - but they also gaffed up on the 940/w Registered RAM for the Extreme CPUs - when it was at 939 thats what it should have been from launch.

[EtheAv8r]

I was thinking of a new build after Christmas, but early news of AM2 and Conroe and slow release RD580 Motherboards of made me think to wait and see what was produced by summer - even if I still went the 939 route I figured that with the new syuff out - 939 kit prices, being 'yesterdays' would drop significantly and therefore be great value.... I didn't expect AM2 to be hugely better for performance, but was also sceptical of the early Conroe numbers.

Now it seems the wait will continue, and the new build could well be Conroe - my first ever Intel!

[ishtar]

Umm excuse me but 2 fps faster in games is not a clobbering you must be smoking something dood

[DR]

2.4GHz is going to come in around the £200 price point - the A64 FX 62 is £700 - thats why the performance is so impressive.