Intel speaketh, and it layeth the smacketh down.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » July 15, 2006, 2:03 pm

My favorite line in an article that will make computer enthusiasts everywhere do cartwheels and handsprings of joy:

The Article wrote:Intel's Core 2 performance domination continues in the Office Productivity portion of SYSMark 2004, with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 maintaining a 42.5% performance advantage over the FX-62. This time around, even the E6300 manages to remain competitive with the FX-62. This is Intel's new $183 part offering performance equal to that of AMD's $1,000 flagship FX processor; it's going to take a lot for AMD to recover from this deficit.

Link

My favorite benchmark in a string of tests in which Intel did not lose even one time:

It's an RTS game in the benchmark, so it's going to be really CPU bound. 65% performance increase for less cost, anyone?

The only problem is that by Q4, only 25% of processor shipments will be Conroe. And with the Dells of the world getting first dibs on the new candy, we innocent consumers won't be able to build our rigs for a while. Oh well, I'm still psyched.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » July 15, 2006, 2:11 pm

AMD's coming out with a new line of processors shortly aren't they?

Seriously though if I was on the market for a new PC right now, I'd seriously consider intel with those numbers.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » July 15, 2006, 2:14 pm

Uh, of course a new line of processors is going to beat a competitor's less than new line. It's just like nvidia and ati - wait for AMD's new ones to come out and spank intel's.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » July 15, 2006, 2:21 pm

Animalor wrote:AMD's coming out with a new line of processors shortly aren't they?

Seriously though if I was on the market for a new PC right now, I'd seriously consider intel with those numbers.

No new AMD architecture until 2008, so sayeth the article. Intel's going to have the field by the balls for as long as AMD did last time.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 15, 2006, 2:59 pm

The only bad thing from the article is the part about availability. Sounds like unless you buy a Dell it's going to be tough (and costly) for awhile to find a Core 2 floating around.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » July 16, 2006, 1:10 am

Aslanna wrote:The only bad thing from the article is the part about availability. Sounds like unless you buy a Dell it's going to be tough (and costly) for awhile to find a Core 2 floating around.

Right, but it's nothing unexpected. I'd rather wait a while for Vista to get a service pack or two before plopping my dollars down on a new rig, anyway.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » July 18, 2006, 11:15 pm

fuck i wish i didnt buy an AMD machine last fall...

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » July 20, 2006, 6:28 pm

News like this makes me happy that I havn't built my new machine yet.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 20, 2006, 7:13 pm

Voronwë wrote:fuck i wish i didnt buy an AMD machine last fall...

Why would you say that? It will be close to a year later before you could get your hands on one of these. Who knows what kind of first generation motherboard, etc issues they'll have.

Have you gotten zero benefit from your new AMD system over the past 8+ months? I can see a month or two of waiting, if you actually knew something was coming out or of a price drop, but otherwise buy wisely every two years and you're set.

If you have a dual core X2/PCi-E, there's not much of a reason to upgrade for awhile, and if you did upgrade, it would be the graphics card/memory most likely.

If you bought a single core and have a 939 socket, why not just drop in a dual core X2 CPU now that the prices are/will be dramatically cheaper to get a nice boost in performance? You spend ~200.00 for a nice increase plus the benefit of dual core >>>> single core.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 25, 2006, 1:46 pm

Here's a pretty in depth review of the new Intel processors. They're looking good.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q ... dex.x?pg=1

AMD announced more huge price drops on their X2 chips to stay competitive although the Intel chips, when they come out and if available in the 4th quarter, are still better values. Nothing new here. Nice to see Intel back in the game!

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/10413

masteen · Post by **masteen** » July 26, 2006, 5:29 pm

Holy fucking shit! A competitive market resulting in better product and value for consumers? What would Comrade Lenin say about this?!?

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 26, 2006, 7:43 pm

So what would make a good motherboard to go with a new Core 2 system? While it might be awhile on getting the processor can always buy a few others parts.

A quick glance basically narrows it to Asus P5W DH Deluxe for me. But I don't know if anyone else has anything decent or if Asus will be putting out something new soon.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 26, 2006, 8:32 pm

Realistically, it will probably be six months (Jan 2007) before these are obtainable not through Dell, etc.

By then, I'd think a few more motherboards will come out to choose from.

Can't hurt to start following the forum support threads on what is available to see what the issues are with memory, graphics cards, etc.

The only bad thing I've seen about that board so far is OC'ing:

As we have just seen in this article, the youngest Core 2 Duo models boast very good overclocking potential. In fact, it is much better than that of other CPUs from the same price range. During our test session we managed to overclock Intel Core 2 Duo by more than 50% without touching its Vcore and using an air cooler. However, we didn’t even come close to revealing its entire overclocking potential, because of the hardware-related issues of the platform we used.

As we have already said, Core 2 Duo processors have their clock frequency multiplier locked at a relatively low value. As a result, the mainboards used for overclocking experiments like that should allow increasing the FSB frequency quite significantly. Unfortunately, the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mainboard we used could only support 420MHz FSB frequency. That is why we didn’t manage to get more impressive results. Although, what we achieved was quite remarkable already, I should say.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 27, 2006, 4:54 pm

It looks like Intel has its act together with the core duo chips. Sooner than i thought! Maybe there will be enough around to plan a computer build before Christmas.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060727/tc_nm/intel_dc_5

Intel to ship new chips in August
By Aiko Hayashi

Thu Jul 27, 4:29 AM ET

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) said on Thursday it plans to start shipping new processors for desktop and laptop computers in August, betting the energy-saving chips would help the world's largest semiconductor maker regain share from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news).

Intel, which has been losing market share in computer processors to AMD, is introducing a series of new products with all-new designs this year. It says the chips bring better performance and lower power consumption, counting on them to help halt several quarters of falling sales and profits.

Even though AMD, once relegated to mimicking Intel's advances, had emerged as a nimble and innovative competitor with powerful and energy-efficient chips many say are superior to Intel's offerings, analysts now say Intel will likely regain the technology crown with the new processors.

Tsuyoshi Abe, Intel's sales and marketing general manager, expects a tough fight ahead, but he was confident of winning with the new Core 2 Duo processor series which is planned to be used for over 550 desktop and laptop computers from makers including Dell (Nasdaq:DELL - news), Fujitsu (6702.T) and Lenovo (0992.HK).

"The competition in the market will continue to heat up as every maker tries hard to improve its products, but I believe our new processors can help us beat our competitors," he told a news conference.

The Core 2 Duo series, previously codenamed Conroe and Merom, is the second in a range of products that use a more efficient design after the Xeon 5100 series, a new chip for computer servers that hit the market last month.

Kazumasa Yoshida, co-president of Intel's Japan unit, said the company also hoped its energy-efficient chips would boost the overall industry.

"Our business is slowing down in the second half, and we believe the most important task for us now is to lead the market with products like these," he said.

Intel said a new Core 2 Duo processor for desktops, which was codenamed Conroe and contains 291 million transistors, can boost power by 40 percent while using 40 percent less energy.

Intel will start shipping a total of 10 new processors for desktop computers in early August and for laptops at the end of August. Intel has priced the desktop processors from 21,230 yen ($182.5) to 115,900 yen ($996.3) in 1,000-unit quantities.

The pricing for the laptop processors will be announced in late August, the company said.

Toshiba Corp. (6502.T), the world's second-biggest flash memory chip maker, also said on Thursday it is preparing a laptop computer model carrying the Core 2 Duo processor and will soon release it.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 27, 2006, 7:18 pm

Intel isn't wasting time to push its new Core 2 Duo processor into the market. During the presentation of the chip at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters, chief executive Paul Otellini said that the Core 2 Duo will ramp in production faster than any previous processor and will cross then 1 million mark within seven weeks. He compared the ramp to the original Pentium processor, which needed more than one year to hit the one million mark about 12 years ago.

The ramp also appears to be slightly faster than Core Duo: At the processor's announcement at CES in January of this year, Otellini said that the chip would reach one million shipments within three weeks after introduction - this number, however, included units that have been produced well before launch day. Core Duo, however needed more than three months to become available in substantial numbers on the market, so we are careful with predicting how quickly users actually will be able to buy a Core 2 Duo PC or notebook.

Despite the rapid ramp, the high-end Core 2 Extreme is the only processor available for purchase today, according to Otellini. And don't expect to get that processor for the $999 tray price. A reader informed TG Daily that Tiger Direct, for example, was on the lower end of the scale with a price for $1150. On the other end, there are etailers such as Directron, which asks for $1300 and OnSale.com which believes it can get $1420 for the CPU. Besides Tiger Direct, OnSale.com was the only etailer we found that actually had the processor in stock.

A quick check of PriceGrabber.com's market analysis tool reveals that the average pricing of the processor on launch day is $1151 (retail). At the time of this writing, there were no Core 2 Extreme processors available for sale on Ebay.

Otellini said that Core 2 Duo processors are expected to become available sometime early August and Merom processors at the end of August.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » July 30, 2006, 4:50 pm

Gateway has core 2 duo's in stock, btw. Just configured a really nice system with monitor for about $2400.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 30, 2006, 5:52 pm

Yeah but I don't want a Dell or Gateway... Although I'd be interested in when it actually ships. I'm also not really interested in the Extreme. Spending $1000 for a processor is just silly.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 11, 2006, 2:45 pm

Hmmm, it appears Intels reign may not last as long at AMD's last run:

Today we know that AMD is currently perfecting its 65nm processing. There are already pictures of some sample prototypes of their Athlon64 65nm chips. Featuring as low as 1.25v. If 90nm + SSOI and DSL can achieve 3Ghz easily on air, we predict 3.5Ghz on air Athlon64 under AMD's 65nm Technology.

These are the key advantages of AMD's Technology. Intel's Core 2 may reign for a year, but when K8L is ready along with its perfect 65nm DSL+SSOI It's going to be a tough nut to crack for Intel.

http://xpentor.com/mamboserver/content/ ... 4&Itemid=1