Intels Conroe benchmarked!

[boxleitnerb]

Unbelievable and it can only get better.
You better check it out or you wont believe it:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2713

 

[3dilettante]

I'm looking forward to learning more about the internals of Conroe.

The current Pentium M cores already match the K8 clock for clock in a number of integer workloads and were only held back by design constraints that kept their clocks significantly lower.

K8 may still have a floating point advantage over Conroe, but it won't be by as much as it was over Yonah.

AMD hasn't said much with regards to future cores. A lot seems to hint that there won't be a significant revamp for a year or so. I'm not sure if they're sandbagging, unable to keep up the pace, or foolishly assumed Intel wouldn't improve for 3 years.

Intel will probably take the desktop performance crown, and it will strengthen its hold on the mobile space. Pricewise, I think Intel can afford to squeeze AMD significantly thanks to its process lead.

In the server space, Intel's shooting to take the lead in the 2 socket space, though AMD's better topology should mean the Opteron's sweet spot at 4 sockets is safe for now.

This might be a repeat of the Northwood vs K7 debacle, only this time AMD has run out of assets to sell to survive multiple unprofitable quarters.

 

[booomups]

what amd has now, compared to before, is a NAME.

Companys trust amd regarding servers, GOOGLE trusts amd etc.
I guess that this is worth much more than the actual performance lead, even tough i also guess that if those benches are true, amd will have a hard time again.

anyway, with the name amd has now, they are also a lot more credit worthy.

 

[Bobbler]

I'm glad of glad the P4 tanked hard recently (relatively)... Conroe and the future of the P-M architecture seems like transistorized sex.

Those are some impressive scores. A 2.8ghz dual core A64 is no slouch.

Hopefully 2.66ghz is just the starting point and it scales clock speed wise really well.

Seems the consumers are in for good times ahead... Intel is back, after their 2+ year vacation from making good CPUs.

Might just have to hold off 'til Conroe when I do my summer upgrade this year! (assuming they are stupidly priced for their performance)

 

[boxleitnerb]

I think 530$ for the model Anand tested is quite reasonable, but of course less is always good.

 

[Bobbler]

I think 530$ for the model Anand tested is quite reasonable, but of course less is always good.

$300 or so model is the one I'd be looking at, but if that's ~$550 or so then the pricing seems to be very reasonable (considering how it performs against a 2.8ghz X2 and its release time frame).

 

[3dilettante]

Interesting, Conroe may not have as much of an FP disadvantage as I thought.

It's apparently able to issue a full 128-bit SSE instruction in one cycle, unlike how previous models had to break it down into two 64-bit instructions.

I'm sure other tweaks to the FPU should help, though it doesn't look like Conroe can match the quantity of FP units K8 has.

 

[Moloch]

Good thing gaming relies ob the GPU for high res/fsaa (anova inspired comment)
It's about time...

 

[Farid]

Reuters write up on the new core

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday touted a new line of more efficient microprocessors, seeking to bring some sparkle back to a product stable that has come under assault from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

(AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Acknowledging that the world's top chipmaker is "under tremendous competitive pressure," Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said the company was reversing a trend of making chips that guzzle more electricity.

Rattner was speaking at the start of Intel's twice-annual developers' forum in San Francisco, an important venue for the technology bellwether to showcase new products.

The forum was overshadowed somewhat by the company's warning last Friday that revenue in its current quarter would be lower than expected due in part to further loss of market share to AMD.

Intel, which rolled out a new chip for laptops earlier this year, expects to stem those losses when it debuts new processors for desktop PCs and server computers that run corporate networks in the second half of the year.

"AMD's performance advantage is going to narrow in the next 6 months, and it may even reverse," said Nathan Brookwood, head of semiconductor consultancy Insight64.

AMD, once relegated to mimicking advances by its larger rival, has turned the tables in recent years with innovations such as putting two processing cores in a single chip, allowing it to handle multiple tasks more efficiently.

The technological edge has translated into higher market share for AMD, though Intel still outsells it by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1 in desktop PCs and 9 to 1 in laptops.

Intel wants to make clear that the company which invented the microprocessor is not standing still.

Not only is it bringing out new chips, it is producing them using technology that can create circuits just 65 nanometers wide, about 100 times smaller than a blood cell. The smaller scale helps performance and allows Intel to save costs. AMD is expected to move to 65 nanometer later this year.

 

[borntosoul]

im still amazed at those scores, they dont seem REAL!
its as though they were benching at 640x480 and low quality-----im speachless. if those numbers are close to what we will see from conroe (room for improvement is likely too) then i dont see any way that AMD is going to match that with AM2. looks like we might have to wait till AMD has its k9 for a battle. oh well it was just a matter of time till intel got its act together.
EDIT: this just sucks cause it put my upgrade plans out the window.

 

[booomups]

i hate it, but i think that intel also realized that they have to put more resources into the production advantage. 65nm already here, 45 coming.

 

[pcchen]

Interesting, Conroe may not have as much of an FP disadvantage as I thought.

It's apparently able to issue a full 128-bit SSE instruction in one cycle, unlike how previous models had to break it down into two 64-bit instructions.

I'm sure other tweaks to the FPU should help, though it doesn't look like Conroe can match the quantity of FP units K8 has.

Conroe's FPU is very likely better than current K8. However, AMD is also upgrading their FPU in their next generation CPUs (probably in the same way as Conroe does).

 

[Mize]

I'm all for better Intel chips, but I wonder why they chose an RD480 chipset for the AMD platform? It's not a terrible chipset mind you, but it is rather slow. Nv SLI on an NF chipset might be a better comparison because I don't know if I'm seeing CPU advantage or xfire advantage here...?

 

[Mize]

One other thing bothers me...

When the X1800-XT came out only one site had it bitchslapping the 7800GTX and that was Driverheaven. They were also the only site to use and Intel proc. My guess is that Intel does better with ATI than NV.

Still seems an impressive chip.

 

[ANova]

So Tahir, are you going to stick to your comment now?

 

[suryad]

WOW! Intel truly is the master. Never before have I seen processor benchmarks with THAT much of a difference. I just saw this 5 min ago and was about to post it here but nice find there chief!!!!

 

[Moloch]

One other thing bothers me...

When the X1800-XT came out only one site had it bitchslapping the 7800GTX and that was Driverheaven. They were also the only site to use and Intel proc. My guess is that Intel does better with ATI than NV.

Still seems an impressive chip.

Well a cpu shouldnt matter much at high res/fsaa
driverheaven just gets optimistic results for ati cards

 

[horvendile]

EDIT: this just sucks cause it put my upgrade plans out the window.

That was my first thought also: Hey, I was gonna upgrade in a month, now what am I to do?
But then I thought - wait a minute, that CPU is still about six months off, if I understood it correctly. While a 20-40% performance increase in half a year is nothing to scoff at, it hardly changes the world. I already knew that half a year from buying my new rig, there would be faster systems available. The only difference is that now we know the approximate extent of the performance increase. For those planning to upgrade late in the year, this is highly relevant information. For those of us who were going to do the jump now, I don't see that it changes much.

 

[LeStoffer]

Intel is back, indeed!

Seems the consumers are in for good times ahead... Intel is back, after their 2+ year vacation from making good CPUs.

Indeed. Their return is most welcome, and I just *might* get an Intel chip for the first time in several years when the next upgrade time is coming this fall.

But the performance jump (and lead over AMD) most certainly is a huge surprise!

 

[Moloch]

So anyone wanna make some guesses why conroe has such a large lead per clock?