HEXUS.reviews :: Intel Core 2 Duo/Extreme Processors
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6184Up until today, Intel didn't want many to talk about what made Conroe tick. However, with the pesky NDA out of the way, we can reveal how and why Intel is going to reclaim the performance crown it, arguably, lost to AMD since the inception of the Athlon 64 series, some 3 years ago.
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Scan will be getting my order later this month. Anyway I'm off to Test Drive Unlimited Day (my mum has to go somewhere first
Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.2Ghz (400Mhzx8) 1.52V (set in bios, 1.47v real) | 4GB GeIL PC6400 4-4-4-12 | Gigabyte DQ6 @ 1600Mhz | HD2900XT 1GB | Enermax Infiniti 720W | Silverstone TJ07-B with custom watercooling | BenQ FP241WZ
3dmark05 - 13140 | 3dmark06 - 6698 | SuperPi 1M - 15s
Nice review. Thanks!
C2D is damn impressive. Intel's finall back in the game with blazing speed.
Golly, I've not been this excited about a cpu since the FX-55 came out
All those comments about it relying on 4MB cache were rubbish as well it seems as well.
Nice review guys.
Regards
Andy
Before purchasing, I would still like to see game tests run at high resolution. To determine whether it is worth forking out the money for a new cpu, mobo, and ram.
Please, in future incorporate both high and low resolution tests.
I understand the reasoning behind the tests, but this is not how people will use their computers.
I mean, if the results are only 10% apart at 1600x1200 then I would be best off not upgrading my whole system, but rather upgrading my graphics card instead.
Anyway, I am impressed by the results. I personally would probably go for the E6600 and overclock to 3gig+.
Wow certainly looks good. Be interesting to see how far that E6400 can be overclocked. Could be a real bargain. Well it already is really.
HEXUS|iMc
So it's bloody fast then
New rig time in a few months, might be time to switch back to intel. Going to see what AMD's response is first. they must have something in the works.
Rad, you're very likely to find that up at the gpu limited framerates you'll be gpu bound, the conroe won't hurt at all but it won't be giving more than a few percent increase in fps, i think it was hexus's preview look at conroe that had some 1600x1200 benchies and showed minimal differences.
one thing i'd love to see added, can you run a couple of things like pifast with two instances, to see if theres any slow down running two instances. mainly to see if theres a larger drop in performance on the conroe than the ath 64. i'm not sure it would be noticeable, but someone on a preview quad core kentsfield has seen arounda 25% drop in performance when running 4 instances of superpi.
I run everthing in 1600x1200 so i think i'll be sticking with 939 for a long while yet..
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
Hi, Rad.Originally Posted by rad
We also had a Mesh system that featured the Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800 CPU. We've run high-resolution benchmarks on that and compared it against a similar machine featuring an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62. Both setups had twin GeForce 7900 GTX SLI cards in SLI.
You can find it http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6188
Thank you Hexus, this is exactly the right kind of review I want to see. Examining top to bottom of the range and good comparison with existing chips. Hinteresting to note that Asus and Asrock have said that a number of their older boards are Core 2 compatible too. Theoretically you can get a Core 2 board right now for £40 I don't know how crippling it might be for the processor though.
There is that, or there's the knowledge that if you wish to upgrade your GPUs at a later point... the CPU ain't gonna hold you back.
It's swings and roundabouts really.
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they look awesome, i was bouncing up and down looking at the test results, lets see what AMD has to say about this!
If the starter Core 2 duo is a budget diamond which is cool and quiet what is the equivalent GPU these days? My current setup is below minimum spec for Oblivion, so I can't even run it badly. I'm seriously considering a Core 2 duo E6400 any reccomendations for a good cheap quiet graphics card to go with it? Sorry if this is OT.
It's about as good as we all hoped it would be - thanks for the review Hexus.
HOWEVER
Surely there should be some more focus on multicore performance? Gaming whilst encoding or something? I don't really think you've tested how well it performs as a stressed dual core system compared to the X2?
DM
Awesome processor and good review.
As always, people should look at a variety of reviews to try and gather an overall picture to see if the different testing methods give them any insights into their own areas of interest.
I've already seen some quite varying results based on things like power consumption, and while the E6400 chip tested by Hexus looked good, the E6300 1.83ghz part has shown up to be only equivalent to the X2 parts, so worth keeping in mind.
What I'm amazed by though is the difference in 3dmark05 - I thought this was a graphics subsystem test mostly - is the Core2 architecture able to maximise even situations that are normally gfx card limited?
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