HEXUS.reviews :: WORLD EXCLUSIVE! INTEL CONROE BENCHMARKED

[keta]

nvidia do favor amd , soo allways more sli boards for amd then there is for intel , but there is still allways plenty of sli boards for intel and with a processor like conroe there will be abit more , like ull have the nforce 570 and nforce 590 chipsets on conroe boards , will be plenty of them in usa thats for sure , but if moving to conroe in a few weeks , the best intel board is the 965G , its more for the gamers and high end gear lovers lol. but when ur buying sli or crossfire boards , they r neva cheap but they wont b overpriced , ull have the expensive ones like from asus and gigabyte , but then ull have cheap ones from companys like msi , and if u worried about prices and 529us is to expensive for a processor i dont find it expensive when u compare it to fx 62 prices and it beats fx62 , but if u cant afford that , the 6600 conroe 2.4 ghz is 315 US plus a mobo get a cheap on probly for 100 US plus 2gig ddr2 ram at like 150US soo ur at 565 , price of a mid range processor and u got a extremly good pc lol but ill b going for the 6700 2.66 ghz at 529US cuse that is cheap , id buy the conroe XE 3.33 ghz 1333 mhz one but htat wont b out till l8 q3 early q4

[BladeRnR]

nvidia do favor amd , soo allways more sli boards for amd then there is for intel , but there is still allways plenty of sli boards for intel and with a processor like conroe there will be abit more , like ull have the nforce 570 and nforce 590 chipsets on conroe boards , will be plenty of them in usa thats for sure , but if moving to conroe in a few weeks , the best intel board is the 965G , its more for the gamers and high end gear lovers lol. but when ur buying sli or crossfire boards , they r neva cheap but they wont b overpriced , ull have the expensive ones like from asus and gigabyte , but then ull have cheap ones from companys like msi , and if u worried about prices and 529us is to expensive for a processor i dont find it expensive when u compare it to fx 62 prices and it beats fx62 , but if u cant afford that , the 6600 conroe 2.4 ghz is 315 US plus a mobo get a cheap on probly for 100 US plus 2gig ddr2 ram at like 150US soo ur at 565 , price of a mid range processor and u got a extremly good pc lol but ill b going for the 6700 2.66 ghz at 529US cuse that is cheap , id buy the conroe XE 3.33 ghz 1333 mhz one but htat wont b out till l8 q3 early q4

Given the apparent speed of the 2.4Ghz and 2.6Ghz Conroe's the 3.33 on a 1333mhz FSB will be absolutely frightening !!!

Just in time for "CRYSIS" then!

[keta]

yup , i cant wait to see benchmarks , its hard to imagine wat a 3.33 will do but with 1333 fsb ? thats even more performance there thats alot more then 1066

btw cyrsis!! that game rules im building my system for ut 2007 nd cyrsis

[DR]

No doubt in my mind - its going to fly...

..... I got to say - Intel really do have this year sewen up - I am not sure what AMD can pull out quick enough to compete.

This is gr8 for the industry - competition

[schmunk]

..... I got to say - Intel really do have this year sewen up -

Sewen? You West Country yokels with your delightful spelling...

Next it'll be 'Sumer is icumen in'....

[Tarinder]

He drives a tractor, drinks cider and parties in wellies, don't you know

[DR]

Oh golly gosh...

[keta]

lol , yea only thing amd will have a chance in competeing with is K8L thats 5 months away , soo intel will have 4 months of free air to work with , thats a long time and intel still have there kentsfields quadcore to vs against K8L soo intel cud b in the lead for alot longer then we think , just all have to wait and see i guess.

[merlin2001]

thnks for the explanation on =SUM Bob, makes sense, as I had to get dragged kicking and screaming off Lotus simply cause 1-2-3 didn't require me to put in a '=' each time i wanted to enter a formula. that said, i would be careful using it that way as, if you ever put a comma into the formula by mistake, it won't give you an error - it'll give you a wrong answer. (e.g =SUM(45+3,2) would return 50 where = 45+3,2 would return an error (assuming you are planning on entering 45+3.2))... ...but back onto topic -
really looking forward to Conroe and glad to see intel is back in competition in the desktop space. The winners, ultimately, are us consumers and I'm looking forward to building my first dual core PC in time for Vista. Looks like now it may even be an Intel. [making my score 3 for AMDs (486DX280, XP2500 and A64 3500) and 6? for Intel (8086, 286, 386DX40, P1 150Mhz, celeron 700Mhz, ??Conroe??)]

[hkBst]

I'd like to see some GNU/Linux benchmarks for the real review.
First off of course is compiling the Linux kernel with gcc-4 on Linux. Secondly a recent OpenGL-game benchmark would be nice. Maybe also Oblivion once it works on Wine.

[MacQuest]

The other day I was in the MAC store of all places and was having a play with an iMac. Now I am OS / hardware agnostic (Being a coder & gamer) and was very excited to see this system able to boot into both WindowsXP and Mac OSX Tiger. Both were running natively of course.

Free *"Boot Camp" download from Apple which enables this dual boot cabability. http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

* Read between the lines of the name "Boot Camp." The obvious: Dual boot enabler. The subliminal: what do people go to military Boot Camp for? To prepare for what?

The official OS "war" starts the day Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" hits store shelves, before this years holiday season.

Boot Camp requires a FULL version of winBlows xPee sPee 2 and when available, xPee sPee 3... um... I mean vista.

January 2007 right? No wait, miCrapsoft now says Q2 '07, so April[ish], right? I think... or has the ship date slipped to '08 yet? Didn't silly billyG say '05, maybe '06, back in '03?!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10...horn_is_going/

Well, just to be safe, within the first decade of the 21st century miCrapsoft will ship [wannabe] Mac OS X... oops, vista... maybe.

I'm sure miCrapsoft's own employees have something good to say about their company, their work environment, and it's upcoming "new" OS:

http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03....html#comments

Gee, maybe not. Moving on...

Given there's a lot to like about both VISTA

There was a lot to like about it, until all of those "new" features of that "new" winBlows OS [the same features Mac OS X has already had for several years] were cut out.

At least it'll kind of look like Mac OS X [in a cheap, imitation kind of way], with ridiculous hardware requirements just to get that Mac OS X look.

Of course, you can turn off the "eye candy" so that you're computer won't run dog slow, effectively turning off the main feature that did make it into xPee sPee3 and may make people want to... ahem... "upgrade"... to vista.

...I've decided to purchase a PowerPC

THIS IS ACTUALLY WHY I JUST JOINED THIS COMMUNITY... so that I could correct this.

I'm sure you meant what is [and soon, was] called a PowerMac, the Macintosh tower CPU.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...&nclm=PowerMac

'PowerPC' processors that used the RISC architecture is what Apple is phasing it's computer line away from, in favor of the x86/x64 CISC architecture, hence the shift to Intel processors that began on January 10th of this year and will be completed as early as Apple's WWDC [WorlWide Developers Conference] in August. http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/index.html

Maybe sooner.

RISC is a superior architecture to CISC, but the processors no longer made sense in Apple's home computers, in particular notebooks. That's why there was never a G5 PowerBook notebook, only G5 iMac and PowerMac desktop Macs.

Why do I know RISC is superior to CISC? Because all 3 major gaming consoles [Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, and even miCrapsoft's xbox 360] are all RISC based and all dumped Intel's CISC architecture in '04.

Here's a pic a [former] m$ employee took of PowerPC Macs being delivered to miCrapsoft's headquarters: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclect...microsoft.html

Right before he was fired for taking it.

Apple traditionally [not always, but usually] holds this annual event earlier in the year [June/July] but this year announced it for the 2nd week of August. Apple announced this August event within a couple of days of Intel having announced that it's next generation all 64 bit, Core series processors [mobile = Merom/ desktop = Conroe / server = Woodcrest] would ship in... you guessed it... August.

Coincidence? I think not. Apple was aligning this DEVELOPER event that has been used in the past to announce new Macintosh PROFESSIONAL line products [like the G5 PowerMacs in '03] with Intel's newly announced chip availability timeframe.

...I've decided to purchase a PowerPC that may very well feature Conroe.

That may be the case, at least.

Actually, it's looking like Intel's server class chips [Woodcrest, NOT Conroe] which will be released within the month [June 19th] may make it into the $2000+ Apple Macintosh towers, that will probably be renamed "Mac Pro's" instead of "PowerMac's" since Apple no longer uses PowerPC processors http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/...24193509.shtml

We [the Mac community] expect[ed] the new Mac Pro towers/PowerMac replacements to be announced at WWDC, but I have no doubt that Apple will release them sooner if Intel continues to release it's processors earlier than expected.

I PERSONALLY EXPECT APPLE TO RELEASE A NEW CONSUMER PRICED [$1,000 - $1,500] UPGRADEABLE MACINTOSH MINI-TOWER [MAC PRO MINI?] BY AUGUST'S WWDC [OR BY THE HOLIDAY BUYING SEASON AT THE LATEST] THAT WILL USE THE CONROE DESKTOP CLASS PROCESSOR IF THE NEW "MAC PRO" PROFESSIONAL TOWERS USE THE WOODCREST SERVER CLASS PROCESSOR.

FYI. In June of '05, CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple Computer would begin to transition it's Macintosh product line in June of '06. Intel however, was able to ramp up production of it's current 32-bit Core series processors ["Yonah"] by 6 months, and consequently the ONLY Macintosh computer left that is NOT Intel Core based is the professional desktop, Mac Pro [formerly PowerMac]. Apple's entire Mac line up will have transitioned to Intel around the time it was supposed to begin to transition.

This is Intel's superior fabrication capability at it's best. Now they have a superior engineering process as well.

The bottom line is that Intel can yield more, and now better, chips at a lower cost than AMD.

PERIOD.

Blah, blah... K8L... blah, blah, blah.

Mid-range Core 2 Conroe [starting @ 2.4ghz and currently able to OC to 4Ghz http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=99981 ] is CLEARLY outperforming AMD's high-range [and 120%ish more expensive] FX-62. AMD's K8L [due later this year or in '07?] will probably put it back in line [performance-wise] with Conroe and quite possibly outperform it.

But Intel has Core 2 Extreme [starting @ 3.33ghz] coming out well before the end of this year. That should OC to close to 5Ghz at least .What does AMD have to answer to that?

When K8L makes it to market months after Core 2 Extreme, don't you think that not only will Intel have something far superior by that time [remember Kentsfield quad-core server class will be out in Q1 '07] , but that they will have absolutely FLOODED the market with it's higher performing, and MUCH lower priced offerings?

This is going to be a massacre, and AMD will be left to bleed from it. It's going to take a a long time to recover, but I think it will. I hope it will. Competition breeds innovation. We need AMD and Intel to battle it out so that we [the consumers] get the best of all worlds.

Given Intel have also been given the task of creating the Motherboard for these systems one would hope they'd cater for the graphics and gamer crowd and bring out a 975X SLi mobo as well

Apple is currently ALL ATI.

I'm new to this modding thing because not until Apple moved to Intel chips were the Mac mini and the all in one iMacs able to be modified at the processor level. The Mac mini and the iMac both have socketed processors, which means upgradeable processors for the first time in those Mac models. A 1.5 Ghz Core Solo Mac mini [32-bit "Yonah"] has already been upgraded to a 2.33 Ghz Core Duo [64-bit "Merom"]. http://www.xtremesystems.com/modules...wcontent&id=25

I don't know much about mobo's yet, but when you say SLi, are you talking about NVIDEA grahics as opposed to ATI's Crossfire? If not, I apologize. If so, that's why I responded to let you know that Apple is only using ATI in it's line up at the moment.

Anyone care to comment on what the PowerPC specs might be? Imagine a system capable of booting into both Mac OSX and VISTA on an uber fast platform

Yup. With Unix [FreeBSD/Darwin] under Mac OS X's hood too.

Apple keeps it's pricing steady. The Mac Pro towers with Woodcrest server processors[?] will start at $1999. Whether or not they'll continue to offer 3 models [currently $1999 Dual Core G5, $2499 Dual Core G5, & $3299 Quad Core G5] remains to be seen.

What I think is more relevant to what you are looking for is [again] my prediction:

I PERSONALLY EXPECT APPLE TO RELEASE A NEW CONSUMER PRICED [$1,000 - $1,500] UPGRADEABLE MACINTOSH MINI-TOWER [MAC PRO MINI?] BY AUGUST'S WWDC [OR BY THE HOLIDAY BUYING SEASON AT THE LATEST] THAT WILL USE THE CONROE DESKTOP CLASS PROCESSOR IF THE NEW "MAC PRO" PROFESSIONAL TOWERS USE THE WOODCREST SERVER CLASS PROCESSOR.

[merlin2001]

mmh - i suspect MacQuest *might* just prefer Macs to PCs

[MacQuest]

mmh - i suspect MacQuest *might* just prefer Macs to PCs

How'd you guess?



Yes, I am partial to computers that have an OS that actually works.

[schmunk]

RISC is a superior architecture to CISC, but the processors no longer made sense in Apple's home computers, in particular notebooks. That's why there was never a G5 PowerBook notebook, only G5 iMac and PowerMac desktop Macs.

Theoretically, this may be correct. However, the fact that Intel's current CISC processors have vastly superior performance to Apple's current RISC processors is the reason that Apple themselves chose to make the move...

Now please stop being such a fanboy and stop the stupid spelling of companies/products you 'hate' just because you need a side to be on.

[directhex]

intel and amd are RISC these days - the instruction set is CISC, and the processors include decoders to trannslate to RISC.

and i'm with schmunk. i like Linux, but "M$" and anything like it is just immature

[Benji]

Apple is currently ALL ATI.

Without going through your entire post this is at least incorrect. Maybe certainly for intergrated graphics but certainly not for systems with PCI-E slots since they can supply or you can buy a Dual Head, Dual Link NVidia 6800 graphics card from Apple on their website to use with the Apple 30inch display.