   Conroe Benchmarks
From ExtremeTechSumming up for the lazy: the Athlon FX-62 got pwnt.So, what do you think? Is it a hoax? Will you wait for third-party benchmarks before you believe it?Personally, I think AMD had it coming. AM2 isn't good enough, IMO. It's just a slight revision of the Athlon64 with DDR2 support and the usual Mhz increase. Whereas Conroe IIRC is pretty much all new.And now AMD plans on a "4x4" quad-core architecture? Sounds like they're pulling an Intel, to me. If you can't beat 'em, slap four of 'em on a mobo, clock it really high, or plop an insane amount of cache on it *cough*P4 Extreme Edition*cough*Comments?   
  I only see marks for PCMark05 and a beta version of POV-Ray. I don't think we can make sweeping generalizations about the architechture with just that. The new conroe cores do sound great though. Can't wait for some more testing.   ;  Well, you're still comparing an unreleased product to a released and available one. That's hardly fair.We don't know:- What kind of availability Conroe will have. For all we know, they might have only a dozen chips available at launch.- Whether they'll perform as well in the general case. We've only seen a few benchmarks, mostly cherrypicked by Intel.- Whether they'll all overclock as well as the press samplesIIRC, they just announced that the official Conroe chips would be clocked lower than the press samples, in fact. I think they both turned the FSB and core speed down a few notches.And finally, the 4x4 thing is a bit more than that. Allowing *you*, the user, to choose to add a second cpu is a pretty nice option to have. And it's something Intel can't easily do because of their different architecture that's still using "good old" FSB, and off-die memory controller.And clocking chips really high is not a bad thing. It's how CPU performance has managed to improve for the last 30 years. There's nothing shameful in that, and it's not "pulling an intel". If you've got a chip that can run at a faster clock speed, you'd be dumb not to use it.Also, keep in mind this isn't all AMD has to counter the Conroe. Opening sockets to 3rd party processors sounds brilliant, and the K8L they're launching later should be able to close the performance gap as well. And their upcoming 65nm transition should help a lot too.But yeah, AMD will *probably* be unable to claim the performance crown for a couple of months. Then again, they've had it for the last 3 years, so I think they'll survive. [wink]And they've still got the most flexible and scalable architecture. In the higher end server space, the Opteron still reigns supreme. If you try to stick more than ~4 Conroes on a chip, they'll be memory-starved, just like the P4 was.But nice to see Intel catching up. The Conroe looks great (although I'm more interested in its mobile counterpart)   ;  Okay, maybe it isn't as bad as I thought. [smile]But you're right, it's Intel's turn to be on top a little while. [smile]   ;  I've seen several benchmarks of Conroe over the past few months. Most notably, a 5ghz overclocked Conroe that had a 10s Super Pi 1million time. Overall, Conroe seems to be destroying the competition.   ;  Yeah, I feel like you are an AMD fan SpoonBender, and have a slight bias toward them.  Everything I have seen has indicated that the new Intels will blow away the AMD chips.  Not "probably hold the performance crown for 3 months."  It is AMD's turn to step up to the plate, they are behind.  Only time will tell if they can step up or not.   ;Quote:Original post by SpoonbenderWell, you're still comparing an unreleased product to a released and available one. That's hardly fair.We don't know:- What kind of availability Conroe will have. For all we know, they might have only a dozen chips available at launch.- Whether they'll perform as well in the general case. We've only seen a few benchmarks, mostly cherrypicked by Intel.- Whether they'll all overclock as well as the press samples- There are already enought samples out there. Don't worry, the yields will be high enough. Intel doesn't disappoint in this category (at least I don't remember anything major).- We have seen much more than a few benchmark. Conroe, as well as the rest of Intel's roadmap is very promising.- Judging by past experience, most of the CPUs will overclock at least as well.   ;Quote:Original post by vNistelrooy- There are already enought samples out there. Don't worry, the yields will be high enough. Intel doesn't disappoint in this category (at least I don't remember anything major).Over the past few years intel has invested billions of dollars in their fab facilities. No corporation on earth has the fab capability that intel has now. If intel were to suddenly go out of business tomorrow, chip prices would skyrocket, because no one can make as many as intel can right now (including AMD)That's one of the reasons why Apple switched to intel, instead of a more promising PPC provider, or even AMD - Apple has dealt with chip supply shortages for years and they want to go with a guaranteed supplier.   ;Quote:Original post by vNistelrooy- Judging by past experience, most of the CPUs will overclock at least as well.Overclock? How? By increasing FSB...Conroe FSB 1066 MHz. MB max FSB 1066 MHz. There is a VERY little room for increase. (Of course you might hope Intel would unlock multiplier... You could hope...)...Yes Conroe effectivity per cycle is better than AMD, however not by too much, on the other hand AMD lost its fast memory access advantage, and Conroe is colder as well. MB for Conroe are more expensive however, because of pins on MB, and memory controller integrated on the MB.Prices and clocks are known. Effectivity per clock is known as well, so you can calculate how it would looks like next few months. After Intel would remove Presslers from its manufacturing line, Conroe prices would drop even more. It's true that quad cores will not appear until 45 nm manufacturing proces would happen. If AMD will not skip 65 nm in favor of 45 nm it could have quad core on 65 nm.   ;Quote:Original post by RagharQuote:Original post by vNistelrooy- Judging by past experience, most of the CPUs will overclock at least as well.Overclock? How? By increasing FSB...Conroe FSB 1066 MHz. MB max FSB 1066 MHz. There is a VERY little room for increase. (Of course you might hope Intel would unlock multiplier... You could hope...)...Yes Conroe effectivity per cycle is better than AMD, however not by too much, on the other hand AMD lost its fast memory access advantage, and Conroe is colder as well. MB for Conroe are more expensive however, because of pins on MB, and memory controller integrated on the MB.Prices and clocks are known. Effectivity per clock is known as well, so you can calculate how it would looks like next few months. After Intel would remove Presslers from its manufacturing line, Conroe prices would drop even more. It's true that quad cores will not appear until 45 nm manufacturing proces would happen. If AMD will not skip 65 nm in favor of 45 nm it could have quad core on 65 nm.Actually, the FSB max will be 1300mhz. The samples some people have have been overclocked as high as 5ghz, so I wouldn't worry about that. 