Intel Core Duo: AOpen i975Xa-YDG to the Rescue
by Gary Key on May 4, 2006 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming Performance
The overall gaming performance of an Intel platform for the first time in recent memory is equal to or better than the AMD based platform. These results are indicative of an optimized system as the Intel Core Duo responds very well to the i975X chipset with results from our 945GM platform performing equal to or worse than the AMD system. Considering the additional benefits of lower thermals and power consumption, a compelling case for Intel users can be made for purchasing this platform for gaming. It's worth noting that gaming code these days consists of a lot of integer instructions with much of the floating point work being offloaded to the GPU, and micro-ops fusion certainly appears to be playing a role in the stellar gaming performance of Core Duo.
CrossFire Performance
The performance pattern continues in our CrossFire benchmarks with the Intel platform slightly outperforming our AMD system in the stock settings and overclocked settings. We did note in our test results that CrossFire works extremely well on the Intel 975X platform and on our board once we figured out how to enable it. The instructions for enabling CrossFire on this particular board can be found in our final words sections. Needless to say, it was difficult to figure out, but once set up correctly we were rewarded with excellent scores.
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Viditor - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Premiere Pro 2.0 has a 64 bit version that works very well. It has not yet been "optimized" for 64 bit (meaning that basic functions won't run much faster), but you have access to 4 GB+ of memory (which can be a HUGE help when dealing with very large movie and audio files).http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/pdfs/premie...">Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 pdf
Griswold - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
This was obviously a test of a mobile CPU on a desktop platform, so his point is valid. And what does SFF have to do with it?Calin - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
That more than 50% overclock is mind boggling - I hope this will bode well for the soon-to-be released Intel processors. Performance as good as or better than Opteron 175? Looks like Intel already have this side of the market covered.xsilver - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
have intel chipset limitations been discussed on the upcoming conroe?wont all conroes be runnning 1066fsb already? meaning there is little headroom left for fsb overclocking unless some serious progress is made on the new chipsets?
(300ish fsb is the current general limit for intel chipsets right?)
Gary Key - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
We felt guilty when raising the voltage up to 1.3875 as temps increased from 25c to 31c, makes you wonder what a really good heatsink/fan will on this board. :) Anyway, I think we reached the limit of our board around 267fsb in further testing with a water cooling unit. I am sure the CPU had more in it as temps were around 26c at load, or maybe not. We spoke with AOpen and it appears the boards will top out around 275FSB at this time, we had an early board and based upon some user experiences the retail boards are doing around 275 at this time. We have a retail board on the way for our HTPC article.
Griswold - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
What was the ambient (room) temperature?Gary Key - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
It varies during the day, variation is 20c~22c. There is a new program out that will measure the Yonah core temperature through the on-chip diode instead of the AOpen thermal sensor. I withheld our temperature and power consumption numbers until we decide which temperature reading to report as another utility in XP gives a slightly different reading also. Power consumption is excellent.
Our test system (11x255, ~2.8GHz)-
X1900XT
idle - 114w
load - 232w
X1900 CrossFire (P4 of video cards)
idle - 139w
load - 357w
redbone75 - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
That price is a bit daunting for a mobo. This is where if you absolutely have to build a PC right now I would go with an AMD system b/c you still get stellar performance at a lower price point. The A8R32-MVP is a little under $200, and the Opty 165 still costs less than the Core Duo T2400. So, although this is a great effort from Aopen, I personally would build the AMD system or just wait for Conroe/Merom to launch. Boy, but does this make your mouth water if you choose the latter, doesn't it?dexvx - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link
Lol, what happened to the fanboi arguement of saving power for the long term (if you visit the AT forms, its frequently used arguement for not buying a cheap Pentium-D system)? Based on the powerdraw tests from Tech-report.com, you save more power going from a X2 to Yonah than from Pentium-D to X2.That Aside, this Aopen board *is* Meron compatible with a bios update. The folks over at xtremesystems.org has confirmed it.
Schmeh - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
I absolutely agree. I have been putting of upgrading my system for almost a year and I am glad that I did. I can't wait to see what Conroe and Merom have to offer. My only fear is that Intel will overprice them at launch.