Intel's new processors

**Lemur** · 05-23-2006, 15:55

EzyMed, the order of power goes something like this:

Pentium IV < AMD64 < Intel Core Duo

As for which chip is best, at the moment the best chip available is the AMD FX60. But that will change very, very soon.

**edyzmedieval** · 05-23-2006, 15:58

Any idea if the new generation of Intel chips will be available before July the 20th?

**Lemur** · 05-23-2006, 16:24

Forgive me Edzy, I gave bad info. The super-duper Intel desktop processor is not the Intel Core Duo, but rather the Intel chip codenamed "conroe." Here's the ship date info on it:

The company announced that it will begin shipment for the three new processors a couple of months earlier than the previous release dates: Woodcrest will come out in June (most likely on the 7th, the second day of Computex, or even earlier), Conroe in July and Merom in August.

**edyzmedieval** · 05-23-2006, 21:07

Originally Posted by Lemur

Forgive me Edzy, I gave bad info. The super-duper Intel desktop processor is not the Intel Core Duo, but rather the Intel chip codenamed "conroe." Here's the ship date info on it:

The company announced that it will begin shipment for the three new processors a couple of months earlier than the previous release dates: Woodcrest will come out in June (most likely on the 7th, the second day of Computex, or even earlier), Conroe in July and Merom in August.

YEEESS!!! Near my birthday!!!!

Intel PWNS AMD!

**Lemur** · 05-23-2006, 21:22

Weeeellll, there are two things I would consider before jumping on the Conroe bandwagon.

(1) Conroe does not support 64 bit extensions. Not a big deal now, but in a couple of years it might be.

(2) Nobody has done a real-world test of AM2 versus Conroe. So let's reserve our geek lust until we know it's as spankin' as they say it is ...

**Blodrast** · 05-23-2006, 22:19

why on earth would you want to pay a few hundred dollars extra for the newest thing, top-of-the-line thingamajig ? Waste of money, imho. Could wait a few months (half a year, or maybe a bit more), and pay considerably less.
Top-of-the-line products are always more expensive than they "should" be, simply because they are that: top-of-the-line.

**Papewaio** · 05-24-2006, 00:37

Never be the earlier adopter of the first generation of a new chipset.

You will be paying through the nose for the vaunted position of being a glorified beta tester with little to no software that can make the best use of your chip.

Wait to see what the industry has to say about the chips and buy them when they have a bit more maturity... undocumented features that have been fixed.

**orangat** · 05-25-2006, 19:00

Originally Posted by Lemur

Weeeellll, there are two things I would consider before jumping on the Conroe bandwagon.

(1) Conroe does not support 64 bit extensions. Not a big deal now, but in a couple of years it might be.

(2) Nobody has done a real-world test of AM2 versus Conroe. So let's reserve our geek lust until we know it's as spankin' as they say it is ...

1. Wrong. Conroe has full 64-bit support.

2. The AM2 has already been benchmarked and an AM2 with ddr2-800 is only marginally faster than a socket 939 with pc3200, non FX/X2 AM2 will probably actually be a slight slower because they are only equipped with ddr2-667. AM2 is definitely not a generational upgrade in terms of performance. The sole purpose for AM2 is for a unified socket. The Conroe is alot faster than AM2.

**Lemur** · 05-25-2006, 19:11

Originally Posted by orangat

2. The AM2 has already been benchmarked and an AM2 with DDR2-800 is only marginally faster than a socket 939 with PC3200.
The benches from prototype Conroes show it to be significantly faster than AMD dual cores.

Link to your source, please. As of yesterday the only benchmarking between Conroe and AMD64 that I was aware of was from a site that was not able to create identical configurations. So, for the edification of all, linky please.

**drone** · 05-23-2006, 16:30

I'm still skeptical, especially after the last Intel "we pwn AMD" review that turned out to be fixed. It will be nice if Intel can compete again (everybody wins) though. Any word on power consumption, is Conroe going to double as an effective space heater like Intel's previous chips?

The setup for those benchmarks seems a little strange. Why would they run such different configs for these tests? 2Gbytes memory on the FX-62 system, 1 Gbyte on the others. 300 GByte HDD on the Intel setups, 160 on the AMDs. Different monitors and resolutions? From a scientific standpoint, not a very good job of reducing the variables here.

Edit-> talking about the Hexus review, got my threads mixed up here.