Intel Penryn Performance Preview: The Fastest gets Faster
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 18, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
First off we'll start with the results we ran ourselves under Intel's supervision. Intel set up three identical systems, one based on a Core 2 Extreme X6800 (dual core, 2.93GHz/1066MHz FSB), one based on a Wolfdale processor (Penryn, dual core, 3.20GHz/1066MHz FSB) and one based on Yorkfield (Penryn, quad core, 3.33GHz/1333MHz FSB).
The modified BadAxe 2 board; can you spot the mod?
Can't find it? It's under that blue heatsink
The processors were plugged into a modified Intel BadAxe2 motherboard, with the modification being necessary to support Penryn. Each system had 2GB of DDR2-800 memory and a GeForce 8800 GTX. All of our tests were run under Windows XP.
Wolfdale - 2 cores
Yorkfield - 4 cores
The Cinebench 9.5 test is the same one we run in our normal CPU reviews, with the dual core Penryn (Wolfdale) scoring about 20% faster than the dual core Conroe. Keep in mind that the Wolfdale core is running at a 9.2% higher clock speed, but even if Cinebench scaled perfectly with clock speed there's still at least a 10% increase in performance due to the micro-architectural improvements found in Penryn.
Next up was Intel's Half Life 2 Lost Coast benchmark which was run with the following settings:
| Setting | |
| Model Detail | High |
| Texture Detail | High |
| Shader Detail | High |
| Water Detail | Reflect World |
| Shadow Detail | High |
| Texture Filtering | Trilinear |
| HDR | Full |
Half Life 2 performance at a very CPU bound 1024 x 768 has Wolfdale just under 19% faster than Conroe. Once again, clock speed does play a part here but we'd expect at least a 10% increase in performance just due to the advancements in Penryn.
At 1600 x 1200 the performance difference shrinks to 10.6%, still quite respectable:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
Regs - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Though all we've been getting is words with no definitions. AMD has to show something by the end of this month. I see no excuse otherwise. They can't continue to throw us bones to pick at. That time ended over 6 months ago.JackPack - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'm sure AMD felt confident when they thought Barcelona was up against Xeon X5355 (2.66 GHz). Then, they realized they were up against 3.0 GHz. Now, it's Yorkfield at 3.33 GHz.Souka - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'd like to see 2 current top gen AMD chips included in bench... just to show how much of a difference there is...Roy2001 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
I'd like to see 2 current top gen AMD chips included in bench... just to show how much of a difference there is...-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Man, 6000+ falls short of E6700 and barely beats E6600 if not equal. So AMD has no player in Penryn arena, at least for now. If they cannot crank Barcelona frequency higher, then they have no chance. 2.3Ghz is simply far from enough to compete with 3.33Ghz Penryn.
Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
You're assuming that Barcelona won't outperform Penryn on an IPC basis, which nobody can say yet.ShapeGSX - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
That brings up a good point. Why is it that we haven't at least seen a demo of Barcelona like Intel has shown us for Conroe (last year) and Penryn?Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
AMD isn't in the habit of showing off it's technology very far in advance of its launch.defter - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Yeah right, they showed a running K8 system "only" more than a year before the launch...Roy2001 - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
Clock to clock, Barcelona could be faster. I just mean 2.3Ghz is too slow to compete with Penryn. If AMD can make it faster, say 2.8Ghz, it could compete with Penryn. This is just my 2 cents.Goty - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
If Barcelona came in at 2.3GHz with twice the IPC as Conroe/Penryn (this is hyperbole, I know it's not going to), it would wipe the floor with either processor. You can't speculate on the performance without knowing these kinds of details.