X-bit labs

Started by: angryfirelord | Date 06/29/06

Comments: 21 | Last Comment:  05/05/07

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1. Just a minor typo on page 2:
"A great illustration of the progress made in this direction is the SSE, SSE1 and SSE3 SIMD instructions that allow completing vector operations in no time."

I believe it is supposed to say "SSE, SSE2, and SSE3."

Nice article. I wonder if AMD has anything else besides its 4x4 plan?

2. I think that AMD biggest mistake with AM2 was not rise its FSB speed from 200Mhz to 266Mhz like Intel did.

If you look at AMD 200Mhz to 250Mhz Anandtech review you see what I’m talking about:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2741&p=7

Intel has 4MB cache and 266Mhz and 333Mhz FSB. Those are key performance advantages, and their steroids on everything on the core.
http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/306/merom-et-conroe-test-des-core-2-duo/page13.php

K8's don't have a FSB so to say, so increasing to 250MHZ would have done very little. You don't have to increase the FSB to increase memory bandwidth on the K8, you can do that by lowering the frequency divisor.

Anyway HT always works in multiples of 200MHZ, so something like 250MHZ doesn't work.

Anyway those Anandtech benches are quite old, not to mention you don't have a baseline for compairson, we don't know what the clock rates was for the system running at DDR2-800, they don't provide that information becuase they were still under NDA at the time.

Increasing the FSB is necessary on Conroe since the processor could still use more bandwidth with the limit being 8.5gb/s with 1066FSB, even utilizing Dual Channel DDR2-800, with AMD since they use IMC they get the full 12.8GB/s with Dual Channel DDR2-800, though both processor won't reach their theoretical rates.

And currently has no processor on 333FSB. That is something we will be looking for in the future at the earliest Q2 2007, with the intorduction of Bearlake and Weybridge chipsets.

3. in your anadtech link they are comparing an overclocked am2 to a stock one, aren't they?

There is much more headroom in AMD-s HTT than in Intel's FSB

Yes you are right.

I thought they where testing at stock speeds since they only put the memory timmings there.

4. This is gonna be awesum... Allready pre-orderd two E6600...

great article btw, its allways fun to read the more technical ones :)

5. Just how much of a boost does the 4 meg cache that intel ensures is used in most of the tests give Conroe? ("engineering samples") Perhaps 20%-25%? or is it somewhat less?
What does this do for Conroe VS AMD on a true
clock for clock basis?

Intel should remove the extra cache and amd should remove the IMC HT that way we know which chip is better clock for clock. :)

6. Sure, the intel pretty much owns for now. but we don't know what will happen when amd goes to 65 nm. as every bench on the internet keeps comparing a 90 nm FX 62 against a 65 nm conroe X6800. It might get interesting again after amd makes the switch too as there is a lot more headroom in the 65nm process, considering 90 nm is reaching is limit.

7. One thing I'm still not quite sure about is how the Core 2 Duo compares to the Athlon64 series' Cool'n'Quiet technology.

While it's admirable that the Conroe TDP is about 65W, I still see overall power consumption higher than on an A64, which with CnQ enabled runs in 1GHz low power mode practically 99% of the time.

Is there a similar feature on the Conroe, or does it run at full speed all of the time (although with dynamically en-/disabled units)? And what does that mean in regard to overall power consumption and noise and heat levels?

I'd really appreciate a direct comparison between the A64 and Conroe technologies in this regard.

The Intel Conroe have EIST which drops the frequency down to 1.6GHZ, when the processor is idling, since they are limited to x6 multipliers.

Thanks for that info. Do you have any idea what the power draw might be at 1.6GHz? Will it be comparable to the power draw of CnQ at 1GHz?

8. hello i would like to ask xbilab guys how many cash you get from amd to crap on such great products. i have amd 3200 and it is ok but when i earn some serious money i will get intel 6800 core duo. overcloacking is for idiots. I have nforce 4 ultra and the best woter cooling system. after 1 hour of hard time at 2400 mHz in game my computer crashes.temperature does not excides 37 celsius. Problem is definitly in processor because i have ati x 1900 xt with 512 mb witch is also water cooled.

I smell cheese here.
Both are water cooled so therfore its the processor? Cheese
A AMD3200 running at 2400MHZ and with the quote "overcloacking is for idiots." Yep more cheese
I ditch your power supply first.

9. Was this article written in another language and then converted to English with Babblefish? Or written by someone for whom English is not their native language? It sure reads that way.

10. It's interesting that over at Tom's hardware, AMD got to 'unleash' AM2 recently. Now at Xbit, we are 'unleashing' Core 2.

I am really happy we have enthusiast sites, but it seems like we get splashy article titles that are too sensationalized.

Don't get me wrong; most of the sites I visit have good info. I would just rather have some more objective headlines that aren't so 'flashy'. Is that so wrong?

More flashy = More hits?

11. Amd should have lowered the x2 price earlier on .

12.

An explanation of Core2 Duo architecture
for dummies
Thanks.

13. very nicely done article
i liked it alot
good info,thanks for the good reading and im just waiting for the release date :)
been wating for this for too long :)

14. I have a question: where are you getting the L1 DTLB entries number?

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