Intel Corp. disclosed some test results of its new-generation Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Quad chips based on the improved code-named Penryn micro-architecture. According to the world’s largest chipmaker’s figures, the new chips may be from 7% to 50% faster compared to predecessors with just 10% increase to their clock-speed.

According to test results submitted by Intel Corp., the new quad-core Penryn processor 3.33GHz with 12MB cache and 1333MHz processor system bus (PSB) provides up to 50% performance advantage over Intel Core 2 Extreme chip QX6800 with 2.93GHz clock-speed, 8MB cache and 1066MHz PSB. Intel proclaims 21.8% advantage in 3DMark06 CPU performance, 7.5% gain in 3DMark06 total score, 37% performance boost in Half-Life 2 video game and roughly 50% when it comes to video encoding using H.264 or DivX codecs.

Intel Penryn vs. Intel Conroe test results by Intel. Click to enlarge

Intel also claims that top-of-the-range Penryn-based desktop PCs will be 15% faster in imaging-related applications, 25% faster in 3D rendering, more than 40% faster in gaming and will be able to encode video up to 40% faster when SSE4 optimized video encoders are used.

Intel announced earlier this year that the new “Penryn” chips produced using 45nm process technology will have greater instructions per clock (IPC) execution, which means that they will be faster and more efficient even at the same clock-speeds with the current generation chips. Besides, the new chips will be able to run at higher clock-speeds compared to today’s Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad products.

The major micro-architectural improvements, besides SSE4 instruction set, include the so-called Unique Super Shuffle Engine and Radix 16 technique. The Super Shuffle Engine is a full-width, single-pass shuffle unit that is 128-bits wide, which can perform full-width shuffles in a single cycle. This significantly improves performance for SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4 instructions that have shuffle-like operations such as pack, unpack and wider packed shifts. This feature will increase performance for content creation, imaging, video and high-performance computing. Radix 16 technique, according to Intel, roughly doubles the divider speed over previous generations for computations used in nearly all applications. In addition, Intel also improved virtualization technology as well as added some features to dynamic acceleration technology, which is supposed to boost single-threaded applications’ performance on multi-core chips.

Each of Intel’s dual-core Penryn chips will have 410 million transistors, up significantly from 291 million of current dual-core Conroe processors, however, thanks to 45nm process technology, the chips will have die size of 107 square millimeters, down about 25% from 155 square millimeters of the Conroe.

Intel’s new 45nm microprocessors will require new platforms that support 1333MHz processor system bus. Currently Intel is working on a broad family of its 3-series chipsets that will also support PCI Express 2.0 and DDR3 memory.