Just about two weeks ahead of the official launch, Core 2 Duo’s true performance capability comes to light. In tests conducted by Tom’s Hardware Guide, Intel’s new processor delivered stunning results, outpacing its AMD rival in almost every discipline. For the first time in about two years, Intel is offering a superior desktop processor that may cause more than just a headache for AMD.
Core 2 Duo will be Intel’s second processor based on the firm’s new Core micro architecture. Following the Xeon 5100, formerly code-named “Woodcrest”, Intel will unleash the desktop version of Core: The Core 2 Duo E6000 series (“Conroe”) will officially debut on 27 July and if we believe some industry sources, Intel may be even announcing the mobile variant – and foundation for all three processors – Core 2 Duo T7000 (“Merom”) on that day as well.
Conroes has been in mass production for several weeks and has been shipping for some time. Press analysts also had access to standard production samples, but were under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and therefore were prevented from publishing information relating to Core 2 Duo. These NDAs expired [last night] and there will be a flurry of reports on whether the new processor is as good as Intel promised it to be.
Extensive benchmark testing by Tom’s Hardware’s engineers leaves no doubt that this answer has to be answered with a clear yes. Core 2 Duo does not only bring a substantial jump in performance, it also manages to surpass its AMD rival.
Read the details. Apparently, overclocking is a breeze.
Another benefit for consumers happens immediately. Since AMD has nothing on the streets to compare, they’re cutting prices to match the price/performance ratio of the new Intel chips.
There’s more gearhead details over here.
Stupid Question Time
Every review/press release I see about the Core 2 Duo compares it to the Athlon 64 X2 and the Pentium 4, but I see nothing putting it against the Core Duo (or for that matter, the Core Solo).
What gives?
I assume its faster, and I assume someone will eventually put the numbers out there, but why hasn’t that happened yet?
My guess is that they don’t want people buying marked down Core Duo computers, which is what always happens during a change over like this.
YOU GOT IT…
Core Duo, is 2 cores…DUAL core duo is 4 cores or 2 CORE duo..
These are based on the P3, XEON core…WHICH you cant by CHEAP.
Then to compare it to the P4, or the P4 64bit, is a BAD test, as the P3 Xeon, is FASTTTT.
The Athlon 64, which BEAT all of the intell chips, THEN the X2/64bit…Is only a DUAL core, and comparing DUAL core to 2xDUAL core, is STUPID.
This isnt even Apples and Oranges,
Its Apples and BS…
THEn comes the thought…The INTELL Dual CORE Motherboard is OPTIMIZED FOR the INTELL chipset. Lets WAIt 1 year and then compare all this BS.
I gotta wait a minimum of two years, so my Cedar Mill can age gracefully.
PS…
I looked at the article…
For the high GHZ chip…It beat by 17% And it costs…$999.
and the Expencive, Athlon 64 x2 = $446
and the REAL expencive, Athlon 64 fx-57 = $811
I think I will save the money, and go with AMD.. for 17%???
The article linked shows NO prices.
PCMag shows “Intel’s 2.67-GHz E6700 chip will be priced at $530, while the 2.6-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is currently priced at $696, a 31 percent premium”…
Oranges and oranges.
@2
The Core 2 Duo is not 2 Core Duos, it is still a single – Dual Core processor, not 4 cores. The 2 refers to the revision or release, not the physical number of processors.
There are rumors that the Mac Pro systems; towers, will be available with up to 4 of these core 2 server chips. OSX Panther will be able to address at least 16 cores. That should slightly speed up video rendering.
Intel really has a lock on this bullcrap marketing, don’t they.
Intel may now own the top couple of performance levels, but there are still plenty of performance levels where AMD still has parity, and only needs to meet or beat Intel’s price, which they are ready to do. AMD price cuts are scheduled for the day after Intel’s official intro, according to what I’ve read.
The timing for building my next box this fall should be about right. Whether it turns out to be Intel or AMD based, it’ll be cheaper because of the fierce competition.
Its obvious that intel has they edge. they have been working on those core 2’s for quite a while. just wait till AMD realeases some new chips. I myself love AMD. But I am Planing on buying one of those Mac Pros when they come out and with these benchmarks are very good, I like what I see!
PCMag shows “Intel’s 2.67-GHz E6700 chip will be priced at $530, while the 2.6-GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is currently priced at $696, a 31 percent premium”…
You will NEVER get the most advanced chip of this series for $530.
Everybody is talking about a thousand bucks.
So I guess I’ll have to go for a AMD. Intel price tags are a joke!!
What? Am I surrounded by geeks who don’t know how to Google?
Pablito — no one said the Intel E6700 was the top of the new Core 2 Duo series. I pulled out that particular example of the new series — as they did in their comparison testing — for a side-by-side with a comparable AMD chip.
Go find PCMag. Go find the review.
#7
Some rumours about OSX internals say that it´s prepared to go up to 8 way multiprocessing.
And the smart money says that next WWDC – San Francisco, Apple will show the new tower systems based on Woodcrest aka. Xeon. This is because this all new architecture has 3 main chips: Merom, Conroe, and Woodcrest. Merom is for portables. its a dual core chip but can’t do multiprocessing (only internally among it´s two cores), Conroe is for desktop machines, and it´s very similar to Merom, except voltages and power consumption (but no multiprocessing), and Woodcrest it´s the Server processor. This one is able to work on multiprocessor systems. But the cream on the cake is Clovertown, the next server processor available with the next die shrink (when intel starts45nm), which is basically a dual woodcrest. i.e. 4 cores.
So, let’s recap: Apple towers with dual Xeons (woodcrest) = 4 cores of intel newest architecture. In a year or so: Towers with dual Xeons (Clovertown)= eight cores. Thes babies will ROCK… but at a price…
It’s also common belief that the rest of the line up will replace core duo with core2 duo: Macbook pro will get Meroms, iMacs will get Conroes. except Macbooks and Mac minis, those will remain with Core Duo.
And to respond to ECA:
Core duo’s are the third generation of the chips developed by Intel -Israel some years ago that became known by Pentium-M.(sometimes centrino, but this is wrong). Those chips picked up the architecture of the Pentium3 and developed it into a Low power Mobile chip. But they are no P3 by all means.
Then they had a major upgrade, (SSE and stuff).
And then came Yonah. Same architecture (optimised) but with the ability to use two cores on a chip. Those became known as Core Duo. Essentially those are Gen3 Pentium M (Apple changed to intel essentially on a mobile chip.)
Meanwhile, battered by AMD and flogging a dead horse (hot and power hungry P4), Intel worked and worked on the Pentium M family and came up with a new main processor to derive all it´s offerings starting August and lasting years to come:
Core2 Duo – this time Intel made all the right steps, (except the name which is misleading and deceptive)
Better programming of SOFTWARE would make ALL the systems FASTER, insted of Hardware.
ALSO, going to a FULL multi processor, multi processed hardware software.. WHICH MS dont want. and dont know how to Write.
And for a 17% increase, you want the BEST CHIP??? thats like going from the 3.0 GHZ to the 3.4GHZ…WHO NEEDS IT??
13 So, let’s recap: Apple towers with dual Xeons (woodcrest) = 4 cores of intel newest architecture.
I’m curious to see how they distinguish the PowerMac from the Xserve.
With the G5’s: the towers were able to use faster chips – with dual cores – because they had room for water-cooling
Will Woodcrest require/allow the same differentation?
Has anyone run a Vista beta on one of these new Core Duo chips?
#16
Water cooling was needed because the G5 was very hot. That’s the thing that made apple change to intel in the first place: IBM couldn’t seem to come up with a chip that could get into a mobile machine without needing jumper cables and the car’s battery…and a fan too.
Well Intel had this chip in the make for years, and Apple just picked the time when it was right.
and the distiction is easy:
Towers: lots of space, nice looking design and graphics cards and OSX
Xserve: tiny space, industrial design, no graphics and OSX server ed.
15,
Yes,
AND thats why the Amiga was 16/8 bit.
It split the routines, and they have a timing mechanism to join at the end.
So what, make a 64/128 bit machine, and ram those instructions thru.
Or even a 256 bit path thru…
For some GOD AWFUL reason Intel based boards dont use a real timing mechanism, as other machines did.
It would be wonderful to have Smpte, between the Audio/video to Sync the 2 for Movies.
And its amazing that a 400mhz Linux system can run Video, and NOT skip, when a 1.7GHz windows system CANT.
MAKE REAL dynamic drivers, insted of LOADING everything, If you AINT printing DUMP the driver, If you aint useing OFFICE, dump the drivers, If you AINT scanning, DUMP the drivers, you DONT need to have ADOBIE in the background, you dont need your Cam driver UNLESS you have it plugged in…
Do those things, THEN..
Load up Drivers ON the video/Audio cards, so THEY do the work, insted of the CPU. This alone could save about 60+% of the processing.
If you’ve done Assembler, consider that 90% of windows and the rest ISNT compiled. Look at the registry, and tell me HOW compiled code would DEAL with it all.(not very well). OR is Windows RECOMPILED every time we startup?? that could explian WHY its so unstable.
\
Man….
ok… yeah
Just remember, I’m on your side… I too feel that software should be optimised. But also understand that in an commercial enviromnment (i.e. Windows) time to market matters. And in a collaborative environment, funcionality matters more (i.e. Linux).
pls. read again my post #15. All I’m saying is that “times changed”.
Nowdays when you run, say, a java routine, you are really running a interpreted language compiled on-the-fly on top of an emulator( java virtual machine) that runs on top of system services (ex. WinXP) that run on top of a virtual environment, on top of a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), and these on top of a base system compiled for specific hardware and this on top of BIOS setup. It’s a lot of code just to perform a “hello World” task…
Get it? That’s why faster and faster hardware is needed.
Sure you could write a hello world program in assembler, talking directly to memory and devices (video card), but then it only could run on your hardware or exactly similar. All this layering is there to isolate the programmer from the nitty gritty hardware housekeeping tasks.
19 And its amazing that a 400mhz Linux system can run Video, and NOT skip, when a 1.7GHz windows system CANT.
Reminds me of when BeOS was first demo’d on Macs… A Mac running MacOS could run 1 movie in Quicktime without skipping. The same mac running BeOS could have 4 movies running at the same time without skipping.
18 Water cooling was needed because the G5 was very hot. That’s the thing that made apple change to intel in the first place
My point was that Powermacs and Xserve both use G5 – but Xserve doesn’t need to be as quiet, so uses fans that aren’t as quiet as a Powermac’s.
The air-cooled Xserve topped-out at 2.3-Ghz single-core G5s, while the water-cooled Powermac was able to support 2.5-Ghz dual-core G5s…
Will the replacement for Xserve be using dual dual-core chips in the same 1U rack, the way the G5 version is using dual single-core chips?
Will the replacement for PowerMac require water-cooling to keep the noise-levels low? Or will it be used just to get the fastest clock speeds – for bragging rights against other Woodcrest-based systems?
20,
ITS STILL a mess.
Its worse then running a Multi languaged Emulator machine system…
AND ITS STUPID.
The problem I see, is that Windows isnt consistant, in its OWN programming, Not counting Java, ActiveX, DX, OPL, and the rest. Then the idea, that MS dont RUN these protocols, IT modifies them FIRST to run Properly ONLY with there systems.
THEN, the idea that Gates dont know how to run a mutitasking Environment, on a Mutitasking Machine, and dont expect ANY of his programmers to, Either.
I wont go into making Ms windows, Propritary, so that IF’ you are MS you can make a prog run Clean and smooth, and EVERYONE else, has to bump and grind thru it.
21 -Mike
Huh… dunno. Maybe water cooled. These systems became so well streamlined, I mean, the industry became so proficient making compact water-cooled rigs, that I suspect that every hi-end system will use it, just for the sake of low noise. Infact the new intel generation of chips have the best performance per watt so far, so using fans will be no problem.
My main curiosity will be the price point. And the new design. I think Apple will use something similar to the aluminum cases to transmit a sense of continuity in this platform change.
22. ECA. Man, I’ve been reading your posts but you express yourself in a way that sometimes it’s hard to perceive what you try to say…but anyway…
All these M$ technologies were developed in different timeframes, and sometimes elsewhere, remember M$ bought almost every exciting technology, either to integrate it with it’s products, or to just kill it.
So I’m sure that it’s a mess under the hood. And these Vista delays just confirm this. And, of course, M$ will capitalize it’s hold of the platform to some extent. That’s a given.