Intel Conroe looking to be an absolute MONSTER!

[Nowhere]

Intel's just doing their job... Too large number of my friends have, wohoo, an Intel processor in their machines...which is usually Celeron at ~1,7GHz on Via board with small amount of SDR/DDR and TNT2 or Gf400MX. But it's Intel after all. (heh...these machines ahve problmes with simple mutlitasking/working on them while burning CDs...). Oh, and Creative must be in them too...it's the best after all.
On the plus side...I know that when they'll upgrade, they'll aks me next time.

[Hulk]

Intel tried to coast with the P4 based on thier reputation. The Northwood was actually a good part and faster than the Athlon XP for many tasks. But the Athlon 64 was too much for it and Prescott.

If you've followed Intel paper releases over the years you will notice that Intel is eating some serious humble pie this time. They are pretty much acknowledging that they are behind and thus divulging a lot of information in advance to the actual release.

In the past they acted as if they were the only CPU manufacturer and wouldn't "lower" themselves to comparing their new chip to an AMD part! Heresy!!!

Now they have a fully configured and overclocked AMD system to show how fast their system is. My how things have changed.

Usually the little guy has to show how he can beat the big guy.

As usual the competition is great for the industry. If you have a socket 939 board and an older CPU expect to upgrade for very cheap this summer.

- Mark

[Mehen]

(looking at Hulks sig...)
The 3.06 HT was the last CPU that REALLY impressed me, next one might be the upcoming EE Conroe (~3Ghz) - funny how its "slower"...

[Nowhere]

Intel tried to coast with the P4 based on thier reputation. The Northwood was actually a good part and faster than the Athlon XP for many tasks.
...

Only that, IMHO, it didn't (shouldn't? people buy Intel en masse anyway, look at my previous post) matter that much, simply because not many people buys the fastest CPUs. What matters (again...should matter?) is perfomance per price.

[wkulecz]

Socket AM2 uses DDR2 aswell.

DDR2 here in Canada is selling for slightly less than DDR now.

512MB DDR400 Generic $49.99
512MB DDR2 533 Generic $45.00

All well and good but the comparison was AMD with DDR vs. the new Intel chip with DDR2. I suspect AM2 should reduce the ~20% performance gap

You are paying too much for DDR400 in Canada, 1GB here is $69 or less. My current system has 1GB, 2GB is the minimum for my upgrade.

--wally.

[Mehen]

DDR2 will change that gap very little. The DDR used in the AMD machine is equal or BETTER than the DDR2 used in the Intel. Also, in prelim benchmarks with the AM2 (using DDR2 similar to that in the Intel Conroe system vs. 2-2-2-5 stuff) the AM2 performed slightly worse vs. S939 w/DDR1.

Also keep in mind that at the launch of AM2 there won't be a rush of new CPUs along with it, rather just "ports" of the old CPUs to the new socket.

[Admiral]

Intel themselves market the Celeron even without the Pentium brandname.

You'd be surprised how much trouble I had with customers wanting that "in drag", almost double priced, 2.4GHz Prescott (533fsb, no HT, lower cache...) just because it bare the name Pentium.
The brand is deeply rooted in the mind of the uneducated consumer

[Mehen]

well it would be a good cpu if they were overclocking - but i doubt they are

[Hulk]

I'm basically living in 2002 computer-wise. Still running the P4 3.06HT since there really hasn't been a significant enough upgrade for the money for my tastes. I'm also typing this on a PIII 1.2 Compaq EVO600c. This thing is too slow for video editing, well I can painfully edit in a pinch, but I love the screen (1400x1050) and form factor. Plus it's been absolutely bulletproof (crosses fingers).

Conroe at 2.67 will beat X2 at 2.8 or even 3.0 at half the current price of X2 2.6. Right off the bat that's a good deal.

And lower clocked chips that will still be as fast as today's $1000 X2 chips will be around the $300 range. 2.4 Conroe will be $315. I usually buy a chip when it's under $250 so I think I'll be upgrading to a Conroe 2.4GHz and Merom system sometime in September.

Now I do hope that AM2 works out for AMD.

Best case scenario:

AM2 once tuned shows 10% performance increase
New stepping chips and features show another 10% increase
This would put AMD on par clock-for-clock with Intel again, or almost.

Finally AMD must release X2 at 2.8 and move to 65nm process ASAP.

I hope they can make it happen. Since Conroe won't appear until August they do have some breathing room and Intel showed its hand. They know what they have to do. The question is can they do it in time?

- Mark

[Marshmallowman]

I don't know if it will happen straight away but with AMD moving to ddr-2 they *should* be doing a major SSE overhaul since ddr-2 800 has the bandwidth that SSE can use , and SSE is very latency tolerant. I really can see AMD's easily increase average ipc +10% of there cpu's.

[Nowhere]

...as happened with K75 Thunderbird -> Athlon XP (Palomino)

[Jerry Jones]

Despite Intel's technology gains, AMD seems to be gaining in terms of market share:

http://tinyurl.com/lx6dw

It seems to be the cost savings that AMD offers consumers.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Whirl-Secret]

these tests were done at intel labs guys. Wait for independant. Then wait even longer for them to come out

[Tjalfe]

these tests were done at intel labs guys. Wait for independant.

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2716

[spadnos]

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2716

From the review (emphasis mine):

So we benchmarked Conroe; we previewed it, under the only circumstances we could. Intel setup the systems, Intel installed the benchmarks and Intel only let us run what it had installed. Given those circumstances we did our best to make sure the comparison was as legitimate as possible.

So it wasn't at Intel, it was at the IDF = Intel Developers Forum.

But the hardware, software, and configuration was still done by Intel.

I'd say that an independent review, with production parts, would be a good thing to wait for.

I do think that this will put pressure on AMD again though, which I can only hope is a good thing. (our markets being the way they are, "fair competition" isn't all that common, hence just a "hope")

- Steve