Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on June 6, 2006 7:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
A few months have passed since our original foray into the world of Conroe, and official naming has been announced for the processor. What we've been calling Conroe is now known as Core 2 Duo, with the Extreme Edition being called Core 2 Extreme. Initial availability of the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors remains unchanged from Intel's original estimates of "early Q3".
At this year's Spring IDF Intel made the unusual move of allowing us and other press to spend some quality time benchmarking its upcoming Conroe processor. Unfortunately we were only allowed to benchmark those games and applications that Intel loaded on the system, and while we did our due diligence on the system configuration we still prefer to benchmark under our own terms.
We're happy to report that we gathered enough parts to build two systems while in Taiwan for Computex. We managed to acquire a Socket-AM2 motherboard equipped with an Athlon 64 FX-62 and a P965 motherboard equipped with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz at our hotel, along with two sets of 2x1GB of DDR2-800 (only 5-5-5-12 modules though), a pair of Hitachi 7K250 SATA hard drives, and two NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTXes (one for each system) - it helps that all the major players have offices in Taiwan. Of course we happened to pack some power supplies, monitors, keyboards and mice in our carry-on luggage, as well as copies of Windows XP, Quake 4, F.E.A.R., Battlefield 2, SYSMark 2004 and Winstone 2004.
When faced with the choice of testing Conroe or sleeping , we stayed up benchmarking (we'll blame it on the jet lag later). The stage was set: Intel's Core 2 Extreme vs. AMD's recently announced FX-62, and while it's still too early to draw a final verdict we can at least shed more light on how the battle is progressing. Keep in mind that we had a very limited amount of time with the hardware as to not alert anyone that it was missing and being used for things it shouldn't be (not yet at least), so we weren't able to run our full suite of tests. We apologize in advance and promise we'll have more when Conroe launches, but for now enjoy.
The Test
In case we weren't clear: we acquired, built, installed and tested these two test systems entirely on our own and without the help of Intel.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.80GHz) Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz) |
| Motherboard: | nForce 590-SLI Socket-AM2 Motherboard Intel P965 Motherboard |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel P965 Chipset |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce 9.34 Beta Intel 7.3.3.1013 |
| Hard Disk: | Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 |
| Memory: | DDR2-800 5-5-5-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 91.28 Beta |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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thestain - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Be nice to see the benchmarks with the settings at default, 2X and 4X default to see if the settings requiring more work from cpu and greater memory use will change the results any.Thoughts?
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Err, I DO hope for AMD a 2x core part would beat Intel's platform which would cost 1/4 of the cost wouldn't you??
And then only in multi-threading. If you want to argue about MT, then Pentium D 805 is the absolute leader over AMD's here.
peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Only if price is a major consideration.In a highend system you will be paying say $795 for a myrinet lan card, lots for an areca 1260 8 port sata, more for your TWO high end video cards.
The processor(s) then become a smaller proportion of the total system cost, so the price differential between 805 and FX62 becomes less important.
Plus the 805 doesn't support hardware virtualisation so is not a good choice.
mpeavid - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Uhm - cost is a cost.If one product cost significantly more, it is duely noted.
Cost is still the PRIME factor in any enterprise endeavor. Business to make money.
neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The two are comparable at limiting the max available I/O's on each cpu, thus both would be almost identical in comparison and AMD still would not have any lead in this area since both are similar here. Take a look at the communication bench to see for yourself on that.
Just curious, where did you see Intel not having any performance headroom and where is it show AMD I/O scaling better? I guess your an AMD fan? At a glance one observation I took in was how AMD and the rest say how AM2 has a faster resolution to their current AM2 fastest lineup, saying how AM2 has a faster cpu in the works and it will eventually outperform conroe.
Based on that argument I seen on many sites, it is my opinion that no multi billion dollar industry has a 1-man marketing team that would put together a product not worthy of such big changes knowing the community of people they are selling to are educated more on researching and buying the best performance bang for their buck. Knowing this they surely wouldn't have released AM2 currently as is if they had already a faster version capable of competing with its rival Intels top performing release.
If AMD is struggling this bad on a new core blah blah blah, then wouldn't you think in terms of processor technology and advancement that they couldn't possibly turn out 5+ years of research in a single year to outperform conroe. I know conroe is been in the works for a really long time now and all im saying is if AM2 was so bad and only gave a 2-4% increase in performance over its 939 top counterpart then why release at all? Just hold off and wait till you have something that can actually perform closer to its rival Intel. Yeah I know its been a war back and forth for years but in the past till now you can assume how bad AMD must be with Intels conroe on top with so much headroom.
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Because you and I, the enthusiast, don't make AMD nor Intel any money. It's the J6P's that buy all of this stuff and keep those guys in business. AMD needed to transition to DDR2 and they did it now vs later. Why didn't Intel wait till Conroe to transition to DDR2 and 65nm when they knew they had a winner?neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I understand that. Mainly Intel can take advantage of DDR2 on its core design early on and stretch new technology while keeping a clear indication on their doorstep that they had conroe to push them ahead and keep sales and the people happy.
AMD didn't have anything more advanced then its FX60 939 to shove in the mainstream with AM2 only being what 2-4% faster, in this sense its only fair to question my original thought, would AMD be better to not launch AM2 for the sake of keeping face with the people and having it look like they need to get something that can beat this new conroe; furthermore, then releasing a small gain that appears to be a flop and having people say no to future AMD.
For this purpose I think it would of been wise decision by AMD to let this conroe come out and have a winning solution launched to beat it or compete with it when the time was right, rather then launching a marketing flop and causing people like us to lean towards the opposition and loss of trust towards AMD. =)
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I think AMD performed as they should've by getting off the DDR bus and letting DDR2 fully take the market. K8L won't be here till next year and I'm sure the memory manufacturers would like to phase out DDR. Especially since we ALL knew AM2 wasn't going to be any more of a performer than 939.Gary Key - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
The last volume orders for DDR have been sent to the FABs already, DDR production at the FAB side will be less than 10% by the end of Q3.neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I agree in some ways. I never said that it was a something bad in context here but that AMD should of waited till they had something to show for.
And DDR2 is not fully taken the market yet, not for a long time by any standards. DDR still remains top sales and DDR2 isn't going to really start seeing numbers matching DDR sales for another 1-2 years because all the major sales are exclusively business, schools, and computers bought on a basis by people to do small tasks where many P4's and regular AMD based machines are still the biggest sales for DDR, and DDR2 being more expensive to build with while keeping the cost down, granted sales are on a decline since the induction of AM2.
From my other statement it reflects that no matter what AMD has done, rather waiting or releasing AM2 like they did, it does not open DDR2 sales that much yet. If you think about it DDR2 sales are still in my estimate a 80% or more Intel sale, because AM2 is proven to be something that enthusiast would rather not go to till it matures more. And then all the major retailers will not promote AM2 so hard to sell just because of the baring they have seen, its not yet cost effective for them. So by this it would make no difference on DDR2 making it more mainstream.
The move to DDR2 is still very slow and will be so for a time. Trust me on that.