Conroe not that much faster?

[swaaye]

My sister just bought a Dell Inspiron. I was helping her pick it out (she has a 7900 Go for Oblivion now ) and it looked like they are clearing out Core Duo processors. They had no options to select processors anymore on their machines, which is different from a few weeks ago. Probably have lots of stock of certain models.

They also have huge discounts right now.

 

[Mize]

I'm still waiting for a 14-15.4" HQ "business"* laptop with Core 2 Duo and either a 7600 or 1600 gpu. That's when I buy.

*business means avail with 3-year, 24/7 same business day US warranty and next biz day worldwide.

HP's 8430 is damned close but no Core 2.

 

[swaaye]

Well I gotta hand it to Dell for the quality of this Inspiron 9300 I've been using since May '05. It has never had an issue. It works as well as it did at day 1. And I've had the thing overclocked (pin mod 400FSB Dothan @ 2.13), folding, gaming (overclocked 6800 Go), etc. It's had a hard life. I'm surprised I haven't friend the power brick. But, it's still going strong.

I like to compare it to my previous machine, an eMachines 6805 Athlon 64. That thing's screen came loose and backlight flickered insanely (very common prob with that machine). And, from what I've heard from people who've tried RMA'ing the things, they come back still busted most of the time. Those are Arima-built machines, so I'll watch out for those in the future.

 

[phenix]

Intel is very clever. Now their Core Duo's will be selling like hot cakes alonside with Core 2 Duo's.

 

[Maintank]

I dont know, Anands showed pretty impressive results at resolution of 1600X1200

/shrug

 

[Sxotty]

I just want prices to fall a great deal. I wanted a dual core AMD chip for awhile, but by now it is to late since they moved to AM2 socket, mayhaps I will end up with an intel chip as well. It would be the first since my celeron 533mhz (it was one of those that went from 66mhz-->100mhz FSB easily). Anyway I look forward to price cuts CPUs were getting mighty expensive againt there for awhile.

 

[Moloch]

Intel is very clever. Now their Core Duo's will be selling like hot cakes alonside with Core 2 Duo's.

There's been a lot of talk about conroe shortages and the like... so has that been substaniated?
The first conroe to show up caries a 300 doller premium over it's MSRP, wonder if that's anything more than just newegg price gouging new products?

 

[Kaotik]

I dont know, Anands showed pretty impressive results at resolution of 1600X1200

/shrug

Which is because they used crossfire setup, while most reviews used single card. When using CF, of course the CPU counts up more even on higher resolutions when the cards limitations aren't met that fast.

Either way, the fact remains that pretty much any application/game out there, $300 Conroe (E6600, 2.4GHz 4MB) and probably even the one step down, 2.4GHz 2MB model beat even FX-62 even at stock, OC'd, it's a slaughter.
Of course if you're severely GPU limited you ain't going to see difference, but difference in other things than games at GPU bound settings, the difference is there.

 

[LeStoffer]

There are always points in time when it becomes obvious to make a big upgrade, now and the next few months is that time for me.

Fx-55
1GB 3500
GF6800 x 2
Win XP

to

Conroe
2GB 6400
G8x/R6xx
Vista

Yeah I think so.

... my take:

Fx-53
1GB 3200
1 6800GT
Win XP

to:

Conroe E6700
2GB DDR2-800
G8x/R6xx
Vista

Yeah methinks so too...

My reason to upgrade is actually twofold: I want to replace the 6800GT with either the G80 or R600 and thus need to get a PCI-Express motherboard, and I want a dual core cpu (and 2GB of ram) for my work with Photoshop. The Conroe will be no less than perfect for my needs.

 

[Natoma]

I don't think so. They're selling "Core Duos", which aren't conroe. Core 2 duo is conroe.

Ah. Ok. You saved me a purchase

 

[Blazkowicz]

I just want prices to fall a great deal. I wanted a dual core AMD chip for awhile, but by now it is to late since they moved to AM2 socket, mayhaps I will end up with an intel chip as well. It would be the first since my celeron 533mhz (it was one of those that went from 66mhz-->100mhz FSB easily). Anyway I look forward to price cuts CPUs were getting mighty expensive againt there for awhile.

how lucky you were.. I had a used celeron 500, the fastest 0.25µ celeron, whereas you had the slowest 0.18µ celeron
(ran at 75 fsb and was still a valuable upgrade from a K6/2 400 for gaming.)

 

[Mintmaster]

Pfft. You guys call those big upgrades?

I'll be going from an Athlon XP 2400+ w/ 9800 Pro to a Core Duo / R600 setup.
Back in 2001 I went from a Pentium 166 / Mach64 to an Athlon 1200 / original Radeon.

 

[phenix]

There's been a lot of talk about conroe shortages and the like... so has that been substaniated?
The first conroe to show up caries a 300 doller premium over it's MSRP, wonder if that's anything more than just newegg price gouging new products?

I don't know about that. All I wanted to say that as soon as they introduced conroes during last IDF they re-named their Pentium D processors as Core Duo. Now that conroe craze has begun people will be buying computers with those Pentium D processors thinking that they have intel's new line of processors. I am not talking about the people who upgrade their computers regularly I mean people who buy computers from OEMs. I have no doubt that intel made the renaming move deliberately.

 

[L233]

I don't know about that. All I wanted to say that as soon as they introduced conroes during last IDF they re-named their Pentium D processors as Core Duo.

AFAIK the "Core Duo" CPUs are the mobile processors with Yonah core. The "Core 2 Duo" processors are the 2nd generation "Core" processors, i.e. Conroe for desktop and Merom for mobile. The Pentium 4 is still called Pentium 4. There is no Netburst CPU labeled "Core Duo".

 

[trinibwoy]

AFAIK the "Core Duo" CPUs are the mobile processors with Yonah core. The "Core 2 Duo" processors are the 2nd generation "Core" processors, i.e. Conroe for desktop and Merom for mobile. The Pentium 4 is still called Pentium 4. There is no Netburst CPU labeled "Core Duo".

Correct.

 

[stevem]

Pfft. You guys call those big upgrades?

I'll be going from an Athlon XP 2400+ w/ 9800 Pro to a Core Duo / R600 setup.

I'll do something similar. I built a couple of systems for HTPC use when the P4 3.0/R9800Pro first came out. Two were overkill and I've been using one as my main PC for a while. I'm tempted by Kentsfield (depending on bus design) with R600/G8x.

Natoma, are you still using that Gigabyte 8KNXP?

 

[SugarCoat]

So anyone got one of these things yet? If so any impressions? A few shipped out i know. I think i'll be waiting as i just spent quite a bit on another venture, but will certainly be looking at Kentsfield EE (core quadro ) by November. Its been a long time since i've owned a chip with an unlocked multiplyer. Problably re-setup my peltier on it and have a little bit of fun . Maybe DDR3 adoption will become more of a realistic topic around then too.

 

[Maintank]

Which is because they used crossfire setup, while most reviews used single card. When using CF, of course the CPU counts up more even on higher resolutions when the cards limitations aren't met that fast.

Either way, the fact remains that pretty much any application/game out there, $300 Conroe (E6600, 2.4GHz 4MB) and probably even the one step down, 2.4GHz 2MB model beat even FX-62 even at stock, OC'd, it's a slaughter.
Of course if you're severely GPU limited you ain't going to see difference, but difference in other things than games at GPU bound settings, the difference is there.

My fault, when I skimmed through the article, i thought they were saying CF wasnt working on their system and they were going to disable it. Instead it was actually disabling itself

 

[crypto1300]

Slightly off-topic, but I am waiting for 64-bit benchmarks with Win XP x64 or Win Vista x64, just to see which CPU has better 64-bit performance.

 

[ZioniX]

Slightly off-topic, but I am waiting for 64-bit benchmarks with Win XP x64 or Win Vista x64, just to see which CPU has better 64-bit performance.

BeHardware has some 32-bit vs 64-bit tests.

The Tech Report did all their tests (bar one) on Windows XP x64 and using mostly the 64-bit version of the respective software.