Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance using Quake 4, Battlefield 2 & Half Life 2 Episode 1
Our gaming performance analysis starts out with Quake 4 running at 1600 x 1200 with High Quality visual settings. We used version 1.2 of Quake 4 and SMP was enabled:
The performance advantage in Quake 4 starts off high, but not astronomical for the Core 2 processors. The Core 2 Extreme X6800 is just over 11% faster than the Athlon 64 FX-62, mainly because we're looking at it in a more GPU bound light than we have in the past. Regardless, it is a performance advantage and far better than the older days of NetBurst chips where Intel's best could barely keep up with AMD.
Looking at Battlefield 2 performance, Intel begins to improve its gaming performance lead as we are becoming more CPU bound:
The Core 2 Extreme X6800 now attains a 19% performance lead over the FX-62, and the E6600 manages a 10.9% advantage itself.
Next up we've got the recently released Half Life 2: Episode 1, running at default quality settings (auto detected with a pair of X1900 XTs installed) with the exception of AA and aniso being disabled. As with all of our gaming tests in this article we tested at 1600 x 1200:
Half Life 2: Episode 1 provided us with numbers closer to what we saw with Quake 4, the performance advantage here is just over 12% for the X6800 over the FX-62. With a couple of speed bumps, AMD could equal Intel's gaming performance here. But the real issue for AMD is the fact that the E6600 priced at $316, is able to outperform the FX-62 at over twice the price. The E6300 continues to provide a great value but isn't nearly as impressive as the rest of the Core 2 line.
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arachimklepeto - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - link
And what about noise Core 2 Duo fan(decibels)?bmaamba - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - link
Hi,Acc. to Toms hardware, for EIST to work, setting in Control panel has to be changed from "desktop" to "portable/laptop".AT guys, was this done? If not, how about putting it in the "Power consumed" graphs?(acc. to Tom(if i rem. right), least power in this mode is about 25watts by core 2 duo!!!).Also anyone knowledgeable, is this setting available in Linux?
Also, how about putting XP X2 3800+ EE in the encoding benchmarks (along with core 2 duo 6300)?
Thanks
Ed
PS.Price and power consumed when idle are v. imp. to me.
herkulease - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Unless I missed it what are temps like on these.Justin Case - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
What the heck is a "composite score"...? What are the units? How about giving us rendering times (you know, minutes, seconds) and render settings, so the numbers actually mean something...?rahvin - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Where's a good 64bit comparison on Linux and a LAMP stack run at 64bit? There hasn't been a serious linux server benchmark posted.BikeDude - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
I'd love to see some timings from a C++ compiler or two... Looks like I'll have to revise our standard developer PC configuration.--
Rune
kmmatney - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
"Jarred that would be great to see. The E6300 and X2 3800+ seem close, but the final AMD pricing and the overclocking potential of each could really make either the clear winner for performance per dollar in the midrange segment."Yes - this is the test that most people want to see. I';m sure a lot of people are like me, and don't much care about any processors over $200. We want to see that the low end can do!! The AMD X2 3800+ is going to be even lower priced than the E6300, so there may be a good battle at teh low cost end.
aznskickass - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
Battle? What battle? The war is over my friend. ;)The E6300 wins hands down vs X2 3800+, even more so once both are overclocked:
http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-...">http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-...
Jeff7181 - Saturday, July 15, 2006 - link
Would have been nice to see a Core Duo CPU in there too just for comparison for those of us with laptops who might considering spending $200 on a Merom if it would increase performance 10-20% over a Yonah with the same power consumption.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Link: http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=316...">http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=316...
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-10/intel-core-...">http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-10/intel-core-...
Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz is approximately 15% faster than Core Duo T2600 2.13GHz, in addition to the fact that 4MB cache versions are 3% in average faster, it looks estimation of 10-20% faster per clock than Yonah is right, even with the 2MB cache version.