Tikiman News: AM2 Launched but Intel Soon to Rain on AMD’s Parade!

The last week and a half was quite a huge launch for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Not only did they release 2 brand new processors (FX-62 and the 5000+), but they now have a new CPU socket called AM2 which supports DDR2 memory. To top it off NVIDIA released their nforce 500 series motherboard chipset. Click the pictures above for more detailed information.

Reviews and Previews have been posted at the following web sites some of which include AMD’s new Socket AM2 CPU:

AMD Zone
AnandTech
bit-tech.net
Digit-life
ExtremeTech
Guru3D
FiringSquad
HardOCP
Hardware-Mag
Hardware Secrets
HardwareZone
Hartware.net
Hexus
Hot Hardware
Lost Circuits
Motherboards.org
PC Modding Malaysia
PC Perspective
Phoronix
Planet 3DNow!
RegHW
Short Media
Sudhian
T-Break
techPowerUp!
The TechReport
Trusted Reviews
Viper Lair
VR-Zone
X-bit labs

What should have been such a fantastic week for AMD is overshadowed by what Intel has in store this July. Intel has devloped quite an awesome processor which you can read more about here.

These Previews were taken at this years Spring Intel Developer Forum:

AnandTech: Spring IDF 2006 Conroe Preview: Intel Regains the Performance Crown
Hot Hardware: Intel Conroe Benchmarks - Showing Big Strength
PC Perspective: Intel Conroe Processor: A Performance Preview

According to the wonderful Tech Site Hexus.net AMD should get quite a spanking from Intel’s new processor that will be released this July. Intel’s processor which was at one time only known by the code name “Conroe” is now recognized as Core 2 Duo .

This performance gain, would represent quite the turnaround for Intel considering they have lagged behind AMD for a quite a few years in the price vs performance arena. The architechture of AMD’s FX (designed for Gamers) and the X2 (Dual Core series) has been fabulous and has left Intel’s processor line wanting.

The following table lists the results for the FX-62 AM2 and the two
Conroes, along with those of other current high-end CPUs.

Benchnmark/System	Intel Conroe E6700 system	Intel Conroe E6600 system	HEXUS FX-62 AM2 system	HEXUS FX-60 S939 system	HEXUS Intel Presler 965 system
ScienceMark 2.0 memory bandwidth (MB/s)	5048.13	5058.14	8144.90	5721.22	5678.11
ScienceMark 2.0 memory latency (ns, lower is better)	45.37	43.31	44.41	47.83	70.11
HEXUS Pifast (seconds, lower is better)	35.14	38.81	44.42	47.33	57.05
HEXUS Cryptography (higher is better)	145.22	126.1	166.1	153.26	123.34
Realstorm Raytracing 2004 (average FPS, higher is better)	30.01	27.13	25.2	25.31	17.19
DivX encode - multithreaded (T in seconds, lower is better)	125	138	164	176	153
WAV conversion - multi-threaded - (T in seconds, lower is better)	114	127	151	163	149
CINEBENCH multi-CPU render (higher is better)	859	773	742	692	716
KribiBench v1.1 - Jetshadow model (average FPS, higher is better)	17.25	16.95	11.4	12.03	15.35
Far Cry - 1024×768 - speed (average FPS, higher is better)	174.48	162.35	125.1	130.2	109.06
Quake 4 - 1600×1200 - 4x AA 16x AF (higher is better)	115.8	113	111.7	107.23	108
Splinter Cell: CT - 1600×1200 - 4x AA 8x AF (higher is better)	63.87	64.01	63.31	62.33	62.05

It’s very important to note that these are the mainstream Intel CPUs running against AMD ’s highest end gaming CPUs. Intel is suppose to release an extreme version around July 23rd. Also note that these CPUs are running at around 2.6GHz while the extreme version will run at about 3GHz.

The benchmarked processors are are also suppose to retail around $500 (E6700) and $300 (E6600) repectively. While AMD’s high end part that just barely came out costs around $1,000. To me this is just amazing. A $300 processor from Intel keeps pace or beats the $1,000 part from AMD! And this does not even account for how well the Core 2 Duo processors overclock!! My liquid cooling setup is going to love this!

One of my friends from nV News named Jacob (who also works for EVGA) recently did an interview with Tim Sweeney at this years E3 Expo. Tim Sweeney is one the gaming industries top gaming programmers. He has made games such as Unreal Tournament and is also heavily responsible for the Unreal Gaming Engine. His current project happens to be Unreal Tournament 2007. This quote portrays Sweeney’s feelings for the new Intel processor. He also describes his genuine dislike for Intel’s current architecture.

Jacob- One more question, kinda in the same fashion, Conroe or AM2?

Sweeney- Haha, well that’s hard to say, I don’t know much about AM2, but Conroe is a really fantastic chip. The funny thing is very few people in the industry have been willing to come out and say that the Pentium 4 architecture sucks. It sucked all along. Even at the height of it’s sucking, when it was running at 3.6GHz and not performing as well as a 2GHz AMD64… People were reluctant to say it sucked… so IT SUCKS! But Conroe really makes up for that and I am really happy to see that, that Intel is back on this track of extremely high computing performance at reasonable clock rates. Not having to scale up to these extremely hot running systems that require a lot of cooling. I think they are on a good track there and if they scale the Conroe architecture up to four and eight cores in the future, then that will put the industry on a really good track for improving performance dramatically at a faster rate than we have seen in the past.

You can find the complete Tim Sweeney interview here.

And believe me PC Gamers everywhere have been taking note of the oncoming of Core 2 Duo. Tech forums all over the net are filled with threads about Conroe:

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE TECH FORUMS THAT HAVE BEEN GOING NUTS ON THIS TOPIC AS OF LATE:

AS A GAMER AND AS A CONSUMER ALL I CAN SAY IS… BRING ON JULY 23rd AND THANK YOU INTEL!!! AND YES JORDAN NVIDIA IS WAY BETTER THAN ATI. THIS I WILL DISCUSS IN ONE OF MY NEXT ARTICLES.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REGISTER AND SHARE YOUR OPINION OR EXCITEMENT FOR CONROE! AND YOU CAN ALWAYS VISIT OUR WONDERFUL ONLINE STORE AS WELL: www.sewelldirect.com