Benchmarking Intel Conroe Core 2 X6800, E6700 and E6600

basmic · 12 Jun 2006 at 23:15

Benchmarking Intel Conroe Core 2 X6800, E6700 and E6600.

Final Thoughts

No wonder all the Intel staff had big grins on their faces all this week as they walked around here at Computex in Taiwan – they are sitting on a kick ass processor and just waiting for the right time to launch it into the market.

From our benchmarking, we can see that Intel’s upcoming range of Conroe processors have a lot of raw performance available. Even the X6800 Core 2 Extreme which is clocked at just 2.93GHz is able to kill the 955 Extreme Edition processor pretty much all of the time. Considering the 955 EE is clocked over half a gig higher than the X6800, it is painting a very good picture for Intel. As Intel ramp up the clock speeds of the new Conroe chips, performance will only become stronger.

Not once did AMD’s current highest performing and most expensive FX-62 processor come close to beating the Conroe. At times, the X6800 was over 50% faster. The 955 EE was able to beat the X6800 once in Quake 4 but that is because the 955 EE has a much higher clock speed. And even in Quake 4, the 955 EE was only about 3% quicker – imagine when the Core 2 Extreme hits 3.46GHz and you’ll have a processor which will destroy the old Intel CPU design.

Intel’s Conroe design makes their older Pentium chips look very, very ordinary. At times, the X6800 is able to beat the Pentium 4 631 clocked at 3GHz by as much as 180%. As far as gaming performance goes, Intel is looking very strong and as we have predicated and told many people at the Computex show throughout the week, Intel is looking like they will be the gamer CPU of choice in H2 2006 and all of 2007. The Core 2 Extreme clocked at 2.93GHz was able to beat the AMD Athlon FX-62 on average by 15% in our gaming benchmarks.

Right now is a good time to be in the industry, especially as an enthusiast and gamer. Intel are fighting back against AMD after some years of tough times as AMD become stronger and stronger and grew their market share against Intel. Now things are looking very good for Intel – they have the fastest desktop PC processor in the world just waiting to let it loose and a great chipset platform in the Intel 965P and nVidia nForce 5 series with ATI lurking around in the background with their RD600 chipset which should be launched around September 2006, apparently the same time as Intel will release their new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors into the market.

Good on Intel. About bloody time!

The Pat · 13 Jun 2006 at 00:05

I was sold I long time ago about the Conroe, just need to decide how much I want to pay for one, once we find out the UK pricing.

speeduk · 13 Jun 2006 at 00:19

Those game benchmarks are not impressive (except for the D3 one).

Jokester · 13 Jun 2006 at 00:29

Not looking so great to be honest.

Jokester

Azza · 13 Jun 2006 at 00:52

not looking great at all. The game benchmarks seem at bit wierd doing them at a resolution of 640 x 480.

In the F.E.A.R one the two AMDs are not that far behind. Also look at the Intel Core Duo 2 X6800 Extreme and the Intel Core Duo 2 E6600, there is like a 3fps difference (in F.E.A.R) and the Extreme will probabilly cost something ridiculous like £1000.

Any way why the hell would u spend £700 odd on a processor to pkay games at 640 x 480, why would u even want to play a game at that resolution?

Those tests just seem wierd and unconvincing to me.

speeduk · 13 Jun 2006 at 01:14

Azza said:
not looking great at all. The game benchmarks seem at bit wierd doing them at a resolution of 640 x 480.

In the F.E.A.R one the two AMDs are not that far behind. Also look at the Intel Core Duo 2 X6800 Extreme and the Intel Core Duo 2 E6600, there is like a 3fps difference (in F.E.A.R) and the Extreme will probabilly cost something ridiculous like £1000.

Any way why the hell would u spend £700 odd on a processor to pkay games at 640 x 480, why would u even want to play a game at that resolution?

Those tests just seem wierd and unconvincing to me.

Wait for oblivion and more fear benchmarks in proper reviews. I am sure it will look a lot better.........

Angilion · 13 Jun 2006 at 01:15

The low resolution is used to ensure that the benchmarks aren't bottlenecking on the graphics card rather than the CPU.

So it is a good way to measure the gaming performance of the CPU, but as has been rightly pointed out, it's completely irrelevant.

The gaming performance of a CPU only really matters if you have so much graphics processing power and enough graphics memory bandwidth and capacity to ensure that the CPU is the bottleneck at resolutions you actually play at. Plus fast enough main memory and enough of it, of course. So Core 2 might show an advantage on PC games with, at a guess, 2GB DDR2-800 and at the very least a 7900 or X1900.

JAzz · 13 Jun 2006 at 01:44

Unless I'm missing something why is the tester using ultra high quality on the games benchmarks. Surely they should use low quality thus effectively taking the graphics card out of the equation?

kyhoola · 13 Jun 2006 at 11:46

From what ive been told by someone online who has a test conroe chip...dont expect too much too soon.

fenderbass86 · 13 Jun 2006 at 11:48

Care to elaborate?

HeX · 13 Jun 2006 at 12:06

Prolly means after DELL and the other big OEMs get their hands on the majority of first batch Conroes us lot wanting to buy them will probably have to wait a fair while due to shortages.

Jay_t · 13 Jun 2006 at 12:18

I'm not sure if they'll be shortages or not. Intel's production capacity is huge. Also, they seem to be trying to entice the high end users at the moment. Why bother if you can only get one by buying a Dell or HP machine. :confused:

Devious · 13 Jun 2006 at 13:22

fenderbass86 said:
Care to elaborate?

Seconded!

Explicit · 13 Jun 2006 at 13:26

Them game benchies look wrong to me...very wrong...

eatmuchpie · 13 Jun 2006 at 13:37

how so?

Explicit · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:08

eatmuchpie said:
how so?

Read the above replies. Then look at the Quake 4 and FEAR benchmarks. In FEAR, the X6800 and FX62 are virtually neck and neck - does that look right to you? Quake 4 looks weird too, the FX62 is not too far behind (there's not enough AMD thrashing going on). On top of that, the E6700 and X6800 virtually have same fps in FEAR and Q4 even though there is quite a big difference in their clock speeds - weird again. Doom 3 looks sort of ok though (no massive difference between the E6700 and X6800 again).

Jay_t · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:19

kyhoola said:
From what ive been told by someone online who has a test conroe chip...dont expect too much too soon.

From what I've seen in terms of benchmarks, I'm expecting loads.

Or are you refering to availability? :confused:

fenderbass86 · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:21

But for something (E6600/E6700) that's not the same speed 'clock for clock' as an FX60, nor anywhere near as expensive, I say it's still fairly decent. Although I do agree that the Q4 and F.E.A.R scores are a bit tight.

Explicit · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:31

fenderbass86 said:
But for something (E6600/E6700) that's not the same speed 'clock for clock' as an FX60, nor anywhere near as expensive, I say it's still fairly decent. Although I do agree that the Q4 and F.E.A.R scores are a bit tight.

Oh for sure, no doubt about the price. But the X6800 is just not pulling ahead as much as I would have thought, especially in FEAR. The E6600 (2.4GHz) gives almost the same performance as the X6800 (2.93GHz) in FEAR. I'm just not seeing that 530MHz difference (2fps advantage in FEAR disappoints me and stands out like a sore thumb). Something has to be wrong.

fenderbass86 · 13 Jun 2006 at 14:37

Maybe they're AMD fanboys over at TT! trying to turn the odds in their favour!