Spring IDF 2006 Conroe Preview: Intel Regains the Performance Crown
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 7, 2006 3:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Gaming Performance
The one area where AMD has been the clear leader for years has been in gaming performance - Conroe changes everything.
Updated: In Don MacDonald's keynote he also provided us with another reference point for Conroe's performance, this time under Call of Duty 2. We have no idea what settings they ran at but the results we saw were Conroe at 111 fps and a Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73GHz scoring 90 fps. But the most interesting gaming tests are below:
First off we've got Quake 4 running the 1.0.5.0 patch at 1280 x 1024 with High Quality settings. The only demo available was Intel's own demo but nothing looked out of the ordinary with the recording. We tested with both r_useSMP enabled and disabled, first the SMP disabled numbers. Updated: The Quake 4 scores have been updated as mentioned in our follow-up article.
With SMP disabled, Conroe holds a 25% performance advantage over the 2.8GHz Athlon 64 X2. Enabling SMP provides a similar 24% performance advantage.
Next up is a Half Life 2 Lost Coast demo, once more an Intel supplied demo but there's only so much you can do to a demo recording to make it favor one CPU maker over another:
Conroe's performance advantage extends to 31% under Half Life 2, talk about a complete role reversal here.
We finish off this page with Unreal Tournament 2004 and a 20% performance advantage for Conroe.
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mircea - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
I think that Intel did this to bite on AMD's recen jump in desktop retail sales. With soo much press from now until release putting Intels' new CPU above AMD it will mkae it a hard decision for some. Plus I don't think AMD would be soo much out of the know if Intell would just show this a week before release. I bet AMD and Intell know the ballpark figures of the competitions release in the upcoming 6-8 months. Of course AMD couldnot have known this a year ago when Intell gave up on Netburst even more when I'm sure Intell was already working on this when or just after AMD released the 64. But then jut like upgrading, trying to beat the competition on each generation would mean huge refresh cycles, and never released chips. Intell proved it can't keep up the pace for each generation. Amd cought up this one, and in doing so let Intell "breathing room" to work on the next one since it was useless to compete in teh current one.JackPack - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
It's far, far too late for an AMD response this year. After a redesign and tapeout, it'll take a year before production silicon is ready. Even respins alone take 3-4 months and masks cost millions of dollars.Quad-core Clovertown/Kentsfield should have taped out already if they're intending for for a Q4'06-Q1'07 release.
No, any serious design work going on now at Intel or AMD is for 2nd gen-quad core.
Samus - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - link
that is very impressive. intel might have convinced me to built an intel-processor system, my first in years.Powermoloch - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
seriously, it's amazing to see intel's new chip can do alot more for less ghz. Dayum :O !!!fsardis - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
i suppose the comparison isnt fair for another reason. the chipsets are not the same. if for example they tested both cpus on the same chipset such as nf4 i am sure it would further close the gap.coldpower27 - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Why do this Intel's own chipsets tend to be the most stable and great performing for their processors?Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
By what, 1%? 3%? 5%?You're not getting 40% from a chipset.
munky - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
First, I'd like to see Intel with a 40% lead in some official benches. The performance lead Intel is trying to show off seems too good to be true.Questar - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
We will all have that chance in a few months.But, as many people have pointed out, why would Intel try to pull a fast one? It's not like they wouldn't get found out.
UNCjigga - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
Besides Intel's 975x at launch, what other chipsets can we expect to see? Any ATI RD6xx or Nforce 5xx ready at launch? Anything from SiS or VIA?