jmke

We first learned of Conroe's alleged performance when our Editor-In-Chief, David Ross, managed to gain access to a set of benchmarks that showed a 2.66GHz model soundly beating an overclocked AMD Athlon FX-60 in every test. But some of us took the staggeringly impressive results with a substantial pinch of salt. After all, they were produced in strict Intel-controlled conditions with who-knows-what optimisations present. If you've not done so already, you might want to take a peek here at those numbers.

What may also surprise you is that Intel already lists the unreleased Conroe on its web site, under the official branding of Core 2 Duo. The formal release is at least a month off but we, being an inquisitive and resourceful bunch of hacks, have managed to procure a couple of Conroe samples to test in our own (unbiased) lab.

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jmke

Okay so these benchmarks show that in some cases the Conroe has a nice lead, but also that the A64 has nice lead in some other areas. And when it comes to gaming, the difference between the two is only noticeable at lower resolutions when the GPU is not the bottleneck, at high resolutions & detail there is no difference between the two. In applications it is a mixed bag, multimedia encoding works much better on A64, while some raytracing benchmark give better numbers on Conroe.

It's not really what I would call "dominating" or a "clear win".

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Ranzy

Conroe clearly dominates here, of course it won't shine as much when the GPU is the bottleneck, that's normal, but that's not how you benchmark a processor. When you take a look at the Far Cry result it's clear how much better the Conroe performs.
As much as I love AMD, to me it's clear that Conroe is the better processor here.

The Senile Doctor

yes, but as a lot of us are gamers, it's no use skipping out any of the cpus we have for each one of these, since in current high res gaming there will be NO advantage whatsoever when you have good gpu's...

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OC-2-the-death
Where the Reverend is doing his Magick, all mortals be silent
Doom over the world

jmke

the voice of reason !

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Ranzy

True of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the Conroe clearly wins over AMD's Athlon FX and that it is the better choice for those gamers in need of an upgrade.

jmke

gamers with S754/S939 shouldn't worry about upgrading their systems, not this year at least, maybe the next; there is not game/software app which requires a super expensive CPU to run quickly and keep the PC usuable; most people still use P4 (S478) and Athlon XP; the masses are always a few generations behind

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The Senile Doctor

and any one of those using a 3ghz + p4 or a 2.2 ghz+ amd should upgrade their gpu's be4 anything else

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OC-2-the-death
Where the Reverend is doing his Magick, all mortals be silent
Doom over the world

Ranzy

Yeah okay guys, but you can't deny it: Conroe whoops A64's butt here, much like A64 whooped P4's butt not so long ago. And I know the cpu isn't that important these days for games, and it's been that way the past year or two, but I also know that this Conroe is gonna sell like hot cakes when it comes out...

jmke

problem is that Intel won't be able to make enough hot cakes to sell to all; so what happens when a product is limited in quantity and demand is high?

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