Quote unQuote

[Darkwave]

I don't understand why you get people jumping down others throats just because they say, i want to see some proper user reviews.

Everyone knows certains sites are biased towards certain chips, toms hardware being one of them, so why can't i wait till peeps from these forums have them and post there results, atleast i know they are 100% honest.

You're not wrong, but when pretty much every hardware site there is shows the same results, what is there left to say? I've not seen a single benchmark where a Conroe hasn't spanked an AMD chip.

Every benchmark I've seen shows that the E6600 is equal to the FX-62, which you can't argue is amazing for a £250 chip, and that the X6800 leaves the FX-62 eating plenty of dust with a dirty look on its face.

 

[Jabbs]

All my point is, i had a friend who worked for a gaming magazine and they were offerd shall we say back handers to give games good reviews, thats all i was trying to say.

I am not saying this is happening but i would be happier with you chaps saying how good these chips are.

 

[Jokester]

All my point is, i had a friend who worked for a gaming magazine and they were offerd shall we say back handers to give games good reviews, thats all i was trying to say.

I am not saying this is happening but i would be happier with you chaps saying how good these chips are.

A lot of the people's who have got their hands on these chips reputation would be in tatters if it turns out that Conroe doesn't do what they've said.

Even Intels benchmarks have been verified by other testers.

Jokester

 

[Jabbs]

A lot of the people's who have got their hands on these chips reputation would be in tatters if it turns out that Conroe doesn't do what they've said.

Even Intels benchmarks have been verified by other testers.

Jokester

I stand corrected then

 

[Darkwave]

All my point is, i had a friend who worked for a gaming magazine and they were offerd shall we say back handers to give games good reviews, thats all i was trying to say.

I am not saying this is happening but i would be happier with you chaps saying how good these chips are.

As Jokester said; These reviewers wouldn't be reviewers for long if this were really the case, as it'd be far too easy to find out that they were being dishonest.

Your friend is either pulling your leg, or it's obvious why he worked (past-tense) for a gaming magazine.

 

[WJA96]

Every benchmark I've seen shows that the E6600 is equal to the FX-62, which you can't argue is amazing for a £250 chip, and that the X6800 leaves the FX-62 eating plenty of dust with a dirty look on its face.

I think what does need to be considered is that the E6600 is indeed a £250 chip, but you need a £150 motherboard to go with it, and, if you are AMD user without DDR2 RAM, £100 worth of RAM. To change from AMD to E6600 is actually £500, at which point the reduced price FX-62 starts to look attractive.

 

[Darkwave]

I think what does need to be considered is that the E6600 is indeed a £250 chip, but you need a £150 motherboard to go with it, and, if you are AMD user without DDR2 RAM, £100 worth of RAM. To change from AMD to E6600 is actually £500, at which point the reduced price FX-62 starts to look attractive.

Are you forgetting that AM2 needs DDR2 memory and is 940pin, not 939? I think almost everyone going AM2 is going to need a new motherboard and RAM for that too. The E6600 is such a stupidly better value processor than the FX-62 that it's not even funny, and Conroe-supported motherboards will drop in price once more are made with better chipsets.

 

[WJA96]

I was under the impression that the 805 can do 3GHz on stock air cooling from what I've read on Tom's Hardware Guide and other reputable hardware enthusiast websites who's advice and benchmarks I have trusted, matched, and surpassed in the past.

It will, very easily. What it won't do is 4.3GHz. You will need water for that. The best air clocks I have seen for the 805 are in the region of 3.8-3.9GHz and that is using motherboards that cost in the region of £100 with £100-£150 worth of RAM. If you have an AMD rig curently, getting a 3.8GHz overclock from an 805 is going to cost £200 minimum, more often than not, £300. Best SuperPi time I have ever seen for an 805 (and please feel free to correct me if you've seen a better one) is in the order of 35s for 1M. So, by AMD standards, it's still not that fast a chip.

I was under the impression that DFI added a lot of decent overclocking options to their BIOS, not to mention throwing in Memtest too? Surely this does indeed mean that "they make the best overclocking boards," no?

No-one who is clocking Intel at the moment is using DFI. ASUS currently make the best all-round clocking Intel boards. It's very different for AMD.

 

[Jokester]

Your friend is either pulling your leg, or it's obvious why he worked (past-tense) for a gaming magazine.

Though to be honest, it was well suspected that some gaming mags were taking bungs to over rate games (remember games are subjective, they could just turn round and say that they really liked Rise of the Robots or whatever), or to get a review out first etc.

Hardware benchmarks are different, there's nothing subjective about getting 10s in SuperPi or whatever.

Jokester

 

[WJA96]

Are you forgetting that AM2 needs DDR2 memory and is 940pin, not 939? I think almost everyone going AM2 is going to need a new motherboard and RAM for that too. The E6600 is such a stupidly better value processor than the FX-62 that it's not even funny, and Conroe-supported motherboards will drop in price once more are made with better chipsets.

But if you just buy the S939 FX-62 you will get roughly the same performance as an E6600 - yes?

If AMD do drop the FX-62 price to about £350 then the logical upgrade path is there, not Conroe.

 

[Jokester]

But if you just buy the S939 FX-62 you will get roughly the same performance as an E6600 - yes?

If AMD do drop the FX-62 price to about £350 then the logical upgrade path is there, not Conroe.

The FX62 is AM2 though, so they would need a new MB and RAM just like Conroe.

And they aren't going to drop the price of the FX62 to £350, in fact as far as I'm aware they've got no plans to cut it's price at all.

Jokester

 

[Journey]

Just a side note, why do you have to spend £150 on a motherboard and £100 on RAM, when you can buy a motherboard from Asrock for £45 and spend £50 on 1GB DDR2 667 RAM? Even at stock speed the £45 mobo, £50 RAM and £250 processor, totaling £345 is still faster than an FX62, which 'currently' costs more than double that.

Oh and the FX62 will not be coming down by that much, AMD would not want to reduce the price to the point where it looks like it cannot compete in speed terms, thats almost like admiting defeat before the battle has even started.

 

[Usual Suspect]

You really think Intel test every ES chip for overclock ability, if so you are having a laugh.

btw Yes they do. Every chip is tested on the line. Most series of chips are made on the exact same manufacturers line .. they then get tested and stamped at what speed they are capable of. That is the one and only reason that overclocking cpus is possible. They cant just lock each chip to its highest speed, they produce the chips they need as with supply and demand. So some chips will be locked at slower speeds than they are capable of as they need more of the Cheaper/slow cpus to sell. So ** E6600 could quite possibly be able to reach E6700 speeds with no proble at all.

Usual

 

[Gibbo]

btw Yes they do. Every chip is tested on the line. Most series of chips are made on the exact same manufacturers line .. they then get tested and stamped at what speed they are capable of. That is the one and only reason that overclocking cpus is possible. They cant just lock each chip to its highest speed, they produce the chips they need as with supply and demand. So some chips will be locked at slower speeds than they are capable of as they need more of the Cheaper/slow cpus to sell. So ** E6600 could quite possibly be able to reach E6700 speeds with no proble at all.

Usual

ES chips are no more overclockable than retail chips. Difference with myself is I know this from fact. I've overclocked several ES and Retail CPU's and the Retail CPU's always get the better overclocks.

ES chips are early silicone wheras Retail chips are better silicone and clock further. The only advantage ES chips have is they are not multiplier locked.

The proof will be in the pudding as when these chips hit retail you will see people getting even better overclocks.

 

[Angilion]

Of course they're doing it. They have production lines that can test EVERY chip for it's capabilities - that's why they make Celerons and 805's (because the L2 cache or the FSB speed won't hold up to 'normal' speeds).

I never said they couldn't do it. I said it would be a bad idea for them to do so, and why.

Normal users will buy into all the hype and they will buy the systems based on these processors. Of course they will.

Normal users will not buy into overclocking hype because they don't overclock. Most of them don't know what overclocking is. Another large proportion of the CPU market is businesses and they don't tend to overclock kit even when they know how. For example, I teach at a college. The college has several thousand PCs. None are overclocked. The technicians know how, of course, but college policy forbids them to do it.

WE, as enthusiasts, do mental things - like spend £300+ to overclock a £90 805 when £250 would have bought a stock speed 940 and a cheaper motherboard!

Enthusiasts are a very small part of the market. An important part, since they tend to spend a lot of money on their hobby, but a small part. As I said before: enthusiasts, the only people who are interested in the overclocking potential of a CPU, are the very people who will know what's going on if that potential has been deliberately misrepresented by the CPU manufacturer. So most potential buyers won't care and those that will care will know if they've been conned - there is no benefit to Intel in cherry-picking pre-release samples to give a wholly false picture of Conroe's overclocking potential. It can only harm their reputation.

We're all overdosed on marketing hype - over on the motherboards forum people are cheerfully recommending motherboards they haven't even seen reviews of because 'DFI makes the best overclocking boards' or 'ASUS make stable boards'. There will be tears and loads of second hand bargains.

What's that phrase from finance...something like "Past performance is not necessarily an indication of future performance". Recommendations like that are based on the past performance of the companies. There's a good chance it will be true for their new boards, but it ain't necessarily so. That isn't marketing hype, though. It's past experience and reputation by word of mouth.

We don't know what the actual real world performance improvement will be, but current Intel users will need to spend roughly £400 for a 6600 and motherboard and AMD users will need another £100-£150 worth of RAM, plus a new heatsink and fan (£20).

So that's about £500+ for most of us (AMD users are by far in the majority on these forums) and what level of performance increase are you going to get? A bit more than you would have got by buying an FX-6x chip for your existing kit. When AMD drop the prices on those then the more cost effective upgrade for many may well be to the last of those S939 FX chips, that AMD have very helpfully just stopped making.

We have a fair idea what the performance improvement will be due to benchmarks at stock and knowledge about the architecture of Conroe. If the benchmarks showed higher performance and there weren't any architectural reasons for it, that would be suspicious. There are good reasons why Conroe would outperform an Athlon64 X2 quite handily, so the benchmarks showing it doing so are plausible.

I agree with you on the price, which is why I won't be buying Core 2. I'll probably buy a new S939 CPU because I can get a significant improvement over my A64 [email protected] for a reasonable cost, but I won't be buying a new motherboard, memory and CPU for £500 to get a performance increase I won't have any use for anyway.

Think, then engage credit card...

I've cleared my credit card. The balance is £0. I'm pretty damn pleased about that. It's been a monster riding my back and drooling down my neck for too long and I'm not inviting it back. I now buy my kit with money I actually have.

 

[Angilion]

btw Yes they do. Every chip is tested on the line. Most series of chips are made on the exact same manufacturers line .. they then get tested and stamped at what speed they are capable of. That is the one and only reason that overclocking cpus is possible. They cant just lock each chip to its highest speed, they produce the chips they need as with supply and demand. So some chips will be locked at slower speeds than they are capable of as they need more of the Cheaper/slow cpus to sell. So ** E6600 could quite possibly be able to reach E6700 speeds with no proble at all.

Usual

Just a quibble - it isn't the one and only reason. There are two others:

i) The manufacturers only allow for rather mediocre cooling.
ii) The manufacturers allow a sizeable margin.

Both for the same reasons - they need to be sure that their CPUs will work very reliably at the rated speed even at high ambient temperatures with mediocre cooling on mediocre motherboards in a crappy case with poor airflow. A CPU manufacturer must avoid any reputation for unreliability.

 

[Darkwave]

But if you just buy the S939 FX-62 you will get roughly the same performance as an E6600 - yes?

If AMD do drop the FX-62 price to about £350 then the logical upgrade path is there, not Conroe.

The FX-62 is AM2 socket, you will need a new motherboard and DDR2 memory just as you would with a Conroe chip, therefore the Conroe chip is the same bang for a lot less buck, so to speak.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Yep same here.

Someone posted a review the other day of a benchmark that wasnt done by anyone intel related..

and it showed the New conroe chips getting 3-5 more fps in games..

Im afraid i wont be getting one until ive made sure that intel having been fixing benchy's

first off, at the same res almost any cpu will show very little difference for fps. whatever people think, the cpu is very VERY much secondary to the gpu in gaming. for CPU reviews 99% of benchies in games are run at very low resolutions, far below the resolution said gfx card would play at. at this point your fps is cpu limited as the gpu can draw whatever you want it too, low quality at very low res. at the normal res your gpu can provide way more fps than the gfx can provide, which is why some reviews show such a drastic difference.

there is one single situation in which a faster cpu, a really faster cpu will show higher fps for real, thats when you have sli, and the sli isn't limited at the max resolution because for instance, your crt can only do 1600x1200 at 85hz, so you don't want to go above that, the cpu will help draw higher fps because the gfx isn't limited yet. but that really won't make an difference to gaming really.

as for motherboards, 2 mobo's listed are pre-order, limited to no availability, that alone accounts for high prices, but they are also the very top end boards. the asus sli amd board, the dfi boards and an msi board were also very expensive, that doesn't mean there won't be cheap cheap boards that overclock just the same. as for memory, so what, 90% of us sell old kit to buy new kit. if you sell ddr now to switch to ddr2 you'll get more value for the ddr than in a year when way less people are buying ddr memory. such is life.

ES samples rarely, very rarely overclock better than a retail cpu, obviously you get the odd great, or very poor chip. but in general there has never been an intel release where the ES chips were cherry picked and outclocked the retail ones. main reason is this, they don't make many es chips, they make them way before release, in small batches, very limited quantities and often not hugely optimised process as that comes with time. when you've only got 300 chips and they all have to go to reviewers they can't all be great.

manufacturers DO NOT< and NEVER WILL test every single cpu off the line. it will never happen. the cost involved in testing so many chips is immense, it adds a huge extra cycle in production, a delay in getting chips out and would require a huge amount of people to check them. its simply not worth it, they know most chips will do certain speeds. its cheaper to just lable better cores at lower speeds so they can sell more chips at less profit, than it is to test every single chip ever exhaustively. its also cheaper to deal with a few rma's here and there than again to check every chip. if they did check every chip then how are DOA's with no damage in shipping possible?

not everyone just uses computers for gaming. raw cpu power is definately on the conroe's side, but the main thing, for us overclockers is this. not only does the over 50% cheaper E6600 beat/match the most expensive amd chip in most situations, its running slower. the conroe's simply scale so much better than the ath 64 does at the moment. 3.4Ghz air is looking easy/normal on the OLDER ES stepping of the conroe's, the newer B0 stepping 5 is going to be the shipping retail stepping and a few are making it into overclockers hands already and they are doing the same or even better. athlon 64's can simply not overclock as easily, or as far as conroe's. cheaper and clocks further and is faster in the first place, they win any which way you look at it.

its a bit early to say but due to the huge bus limitations seen on these early kentsfields, and knowing of amd's HT link architechture and more efficient adding of cores amd's quad core could put them right back infront of intel again. we can hope anyway.

 

[Tooks]

Jeeezzz!

All those people who think that Intels Conroe isn't as good as all the reviews/enthusiast website tests say it is, I have news for you...

The earth is also not flat....



Happy times are ahead me thinks, not only with this new Intel chip, but because AMD will just have to respond, and that can only be good for us consumers, surely?

 

[Angilion]

Maybe I am wrong, but I thought that the yield on CPU manufacturing was significantly less than 100%, with enough failures to make it impractical to not test every chip. If you have even 5% returns, it's going to cost you a lot. Not just for the returns - if just 5% of customers are getting non-working CPUs, it's going to annoy the hell out of a lot of customers, who are effectively being used as testers.