HEXUS.reviews :: WORLD EXCLUSIVE! INTEL CONROE BENCHMARKED

[kalniel]

Great chip. But price? Not just for the chip, but the additional premiums for motherboards etc..

[xrob]

bring on the conroe!! dont wanna wait any longer

[chilled]

Wow,

It's going to be tough to pull myself away from AMD. But with results like that, looks like i'll be heading back to Intel.

With regards to price......who knows. I wouldn't like to put a figure on that.

The cheapest Conroe (1.83GHZ) is rumoured to cost about $241. That would make it on par with the cheapest Core Duo's and much cheaper than the X2 3800+.

But it's just a rumour.

[lusonico]

Everyone knows Athlons "like" to run their memory in 1T, and that 4 sticks of ram memory stress the memory controller,thus hindering performance... Just look at the way the FX-60, with only one 1Gb (two sticks) running 1T beats the FX-62 in FAR CRY in lower resolution... Was it too difficult to find 2x1Gb sticks to run in 1T in the FX-62 rig? Maybe the gap in performance would be really something to neglect, considering that in the upper resolutions, the CPUs perform practilly the same, and Machinist said it best:

...but what about pricing ? That is absolutely key for nearly all of us.

Intel prices are superior for identical quality products, because they have more market presence, and their marketing is better than AMD, helping sell CPUs with only marginal superiority. Users with knowledge slighty higher than the average one would do better to wait before jumping on the intel train again...

[Hiroaki]

Looks like a turnaround - I've had AMD chips for a long time now. As said above, moving to DDR2 (for AMD) hasn't in the past made that great a difference - we'll have to see what happens.

At present, I reckon I'd get one of the cheaper intel CPUs and overclock it!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I always knew that intel will one day come back strong, looks like i have a reason to stay with intel. i was looking to go into the AMD root for my next upgrade.

[Hans Voralberg]

Huhm wonder what the situation will be by Sept? I'll be upgrading by then.

[Rys]

Why was quake and splinter cell run at such high AA/AF resolution ?

Regards

Andy

We did a Far Cry bench at low res, plus two more real-world gaming tests at high-res, to cover both sides of the gaming picture.

[Benji]

Oops, double post, even though it said the session timed out.

[Benji]

TBH, I wasn't expecting great numbers from AM2, and I'm not surprised that Conroe's got a performance advantage. All AM2's done is move the same core design over to DDR2, and DDR2 hasn't been a performance booster for any platform. I'm glad that Intel have come back strongly - I think they were getting too comfortable with the idea of competing on market dominance rather than performance. That said, I'd expect AMD to come back at least as strongly, but probably later this year.

Hammer. Nail. Head.

I still wonder why people constantly think AM2 was going to be a performance upgrade? It really wasn't, look at it this way DDR2 was almost necessary, AMD hadn't used it in the past because if they simply swapped the archietecture back then to use DDR2 then performance probably would have dropped because DDR2 sucked. Now DDR2 has matured a little and has increased in speed/timings it is now AMD has decided to adopt the technology and has ported their current processor archietecture over to use it, the result of this is AM2.

Technically you could say they are benching a current generation processor (FX62) with a next generation processor (Conroe) but thats a matter of opinion. I was an Intel fan, since working with AMD a lot I saw that AMD Processors were far, far, far better in almost every aspect, but since I grew up with Intel I am glad they are FINALLY getting back on track from being a marketing driven company to an engineering driven company. It's just a shame that there is more money to be had from a marketing driven company than engineering because 'we' the consumers are too stupid to look through the big numbers so really we should blame Intel's sidetrack on us.

[Noone]

Duel Cores ok

Lots of Future Mark 01 & 05 etc scores ok

Just want to see a FM 06 - where Duel Core systems shine

anyone have a link to a Conroe FM 06 Bench ?

[64Bit_Oddity]

A few points I'd like to bring up...

The review mentioned that the original Intel benchmarks should have been taken with a pinch of salt. Though as we later learned, there was no need. This is the review that needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Why you ask? Well...

First, the RAM used:

The Intel systems have 1GB of 667MHz RAM.
The FX62 system has 2GB of 800MHz RAM.
The FX60 system has 1GB of 400MHz RAM.

The Conroe system should have been running 800MHz RAM. Why did the FX62 system get double the amount of RAM as any other system? Why did every system except the FX62 system use Corsair RAM, and the FX62 system use Crucial RAM?


Second, the Hard Drives used:

The Intel systems had a Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive, whereas the AMD systems had a Seagate 160GB SATA hard drive. Surely this would alter the performance of the systems? One type of hard drive for Intel, and another type for AMD?


Third, the monitors used:

Why different monitors? The Intel systems used a Dell 3007WFP Widescreen (2560x1600), but the AMD Systems used Dell 2405FPW Widescreen (1920x1200)


Fourth:

Why did you not state the clock speed of the Intel Conroe system, and why did you fail to mention the make of graphics card used in each system?

I find this review unfair and uncompetitive. I really would like to hear why these systems are so unfairly matched? Perhaps you couldn't get the Intel Conroe system up and running with 800MHz RAM, if so, that's fine, then why not use 667Mhz RAM with the FX62? Also why double the FX62 systems amount of RAM?


If this is a so-called "WORLD EXCLUSIVE", then why isn’t this review equal and un-bias? For the sake of fairness, and to give readers the correct information, this review should be updated to give the correct information.


Cheers,

Paul

[Stoo]

Pretty much my thoughts also Benji.

We all knew that DDR2 wasn't going to be a magical "go faster" bullet - all it does it to give you extra head room further down the line.

Most of those benchies aren't any great surprise, as they're swarely intel's traditionally strong ground (mp3/video encoding, kribibench etc), but what is surprising are the Far Cry, Cinebench, latency, and pifast results as they clearly show that intel have made great gains in their traditionally weak area.

Mark my words though, AMD will have an answer for Conroe, just not immediately.

[father smurf]

i think bejny is right. It wasnt a new tecknology - it was an updating of an exisiting one.

I'm sure we'll see something at a similar price from amd around the time the intel chips are realy able to be bought.

[father smurf]

besidse - theyve now got a plattform ready for 4 core chips

[DR]

I don't think AMD will have something this year which can compete with Conroe; I hope they do but they won't - early 07 they will, but I wonder where Intel will be?

All I can say for sure is how exciting all this is