Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - Penryn Ticks Ahead
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 29, 2007 12:13 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Phenom Question
The CPU wars aren't over for the year, despite there being only 64 days left in the calendar. AMD is committed to releasing Phenom in 2007, and with it will come a definite change in the balance between AMD and Intel. No one is expecting AMD to take the overall performance crown away from Intel - AMD simply won't be able to hit the clock speeds necessary - but will it be any more competitive at mainstream price points?
When AMD's Barcelona launched we attempted to simulate desktop performance vs. its K8 architecture in a handful of applications; we came up with the following chart:
Using those numbers, we took our Athlon 64 X2 6000+ results and scaled them according to where we expect Phenom to perform. We then put this simulated Phenom head-to-head with an identically clocked Core 2 Duo E6850 as well as the price-competitor to the 6000+, the E6550.
Note that this is a very rough comparison, first because the scaling values we have were taken from a quad-core Barcelona vs. two dual-core K8s and we're applying it to a dual-core K8 here. Second, AMD isn't going to be launching a 3.0GHz dual-core Phenom until sometime next year - most likely after Intel has already started shipping mainstream Wolfdale parts - which means that AMD will be competing against a completely different beast when that happens. Regardless, the comparison is still an interesting one to make; let's see if we can get any sort of expectations for what is to come.
*Denotes time in seconds, lower bars mean better performance
Clock for clock, Intel still holds on to the lead, but note that there are some situations where our simulated 3.0GHz Phenom X2 outperforms the E6550, which could be its price competitor. Again, we're assuming that a dual-core desktop Phenom will scale as well as our quad-core Barcelona and we're also assuming that AMD can price Phenom this competitively and that Intel doesn't respond with even more aggressive pricing. That's a lot of assumptions for AMD to be able to pull ahead of Intel at the same price point, but then we need to factor in the other P: Penryn.
In a couple of the areas that will be close between AMD and Intel, such as DivX and 3dsmax, Penryn happens to do really well. That means any gains AMD could make there with Phenom may be negated by the performance boost we're seeing from Penryn, leaving us in much of the same situation that we are in today. The only saving grace for AMD is that there are some areas where Intel just doesn't get a big performance boost from Penryn (e.g. SYSMark, Lightwave), and in those benchmarks Phenom will make AMD more competitive.
The end result is that we expect Phenom to make AMD more competitive, but because of Penryn and aggressive pricing - and if our assumptions are correct - it doesn't look like we'll see the sort of upset that Intel pulled on AMD with the launch of the original Core 2. (Or that AMD pulled on Intel with K8 vs. NetBurst.)
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emenk - Sunday, January 20, 2008 - link
From first page (this article): "As we saw in our original Penryn preview, Penryn's cache performance remains unchanged; latencies in our final stepping are identical to Conroe."From the original Penryn preview (3rd page):
"Not only is Wolfdale's L2 cache larger, but it also happens to be slightly faster than its predecessor. Intel has shaved off a single clock cycle from Wolfdale's L2 access time; we're already off to a good start."
Isn't this a contradiction?
Ignore this (testing quote tags):
[quote]Quote goes here.[/quote]
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
You know that will not be true in the true Phenom comparison right Anand?? Take a look here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/8236/14">http://techreport.com/articles.x/8236/14Dual Opteron is slower than a Single Opteron, yet you still used Dual Opteron against a single Barcelona. Why?? No really, WHY?!?
"Because of these limitations we refrained from running any comparative benchmarks to desktop Athlon 64 X2s, instead we chose to run a single quad-core Opteron in our server platform against a pair of dual-core Opterons to simulate Phenom vs. K8 on the desktop."
You could have took games like Oblivion with Single socket Opteron to see the real advantages. This is the worst comparison, ever. And to make it worse, you put "simulated" benchmarks.
victory - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
Wouldn't Intel be able to take immediate advantage of the new SSE4instructions in a new integrated graphics chipset perhaps then
competing with nVidia as well as beating AMD's integrated chipsets?
magreen - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
It does 4GHz easily on the stock cooler? So why don't you strap a TR ultra 120 ex on there and tell us what it can really do? Cmon Anand, stop teasing us and tell us what we really want to know!AnnihilatorX - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
It's a shame that they delay the release date of more affordable Yorkfields to January, just missed to Christmas sales.I am p0lanning to upgrade my computer and not sure whether to wait for Yorkfield or buy a Q6600.
idgaf13 - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
Intel is trying to suppress Christmas sales and have a negative influence on "other companies" earnings while relieving themselves of Old Inventory.45nm process is going to produce so many CPUs per wafer that prices will fall fast or inventory will rise quickly.
With respect to the traditional cycle of product releases and price changes ,
A January launch date allows for the longest possible time before prices begin to tumble
typically after the trade shows in the first two quarters of the year.
It also more time to perfect the production process.
Question is do really need to be "the first on the block" to have this CPU ?
Or can you wait until the price falls by 50% or June/July for the best price?
Possibly even a faster CPU by then.
MGSsancho - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
anand, could you be so kind as to point to where you got the info on the new sse4 instructions? the chart would be cool but some pdfs or something from into would be awsomejsaldate - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Penryn SDK: http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/11...">http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/11...http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/11...Ryan Smith - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silic...">From Intel's websiteMGSsancho - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
thanks a lot =)