Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on June 6, 2006 7:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words: Conroe Availability and Pricing
While Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors will be released at the beginning of Q3 of this year it will take some time for all of Intel's shipments to be Conroe based. The scary statistic is that by the end of this year, only 25% of Intel's Performance Mainstream desktop processor shipments will be based on Conroe. The remaining 75% will still be NetBurst based, meaning they will be Pentium 4, Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition.
Given how competitive Core 2 Extreme is with the Athlon 64 FX-62, you would expect no one to want to purchase a NetBurst based processor if they can get a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme for a competitive price. Intel does have a plan to deal with the over availability of undesirable Pentium Ds and limited supply of Conroes; Intel would do what anyone would do if you're trying to move a lot of undesirable product: cut the price.
By the time Conroe ships, Intel's Conroe and Pentium D pricing will be as follows:
| CPU | Price |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4M) | $999 |
| Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (3.73GHz/2Mx2) | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz/4M) | $530 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4M) | $316 |
| Intel Pentium D 960 (3.60GHz/2Mx2) | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2M) | $224 |
| Intel Pentium D 950 (3.40GHz/2Mx2) | $224 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2M) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 940 (3.20GHz/2Mx2) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 930 (3.00GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 920 (2.80GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 820 (2.80GHz/1Mx2) | $133 |
| Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66GHz/1Mx2) | $93 |
While the Pentium D has never been as attractive as AMD's Athlon 64 X2, at these prices some of them may be difficult to resist. The $93 Pentium D 805 will be particularly hard to ignore, when was the last time you could build a solid two processor workstation for a few hundred dollars?
The Pentium D 805 aside, the rest of the Pentium D line becomes extremely attractive after these price cuts take place, especially when you consider that AMD's cheapest dual core offering is still hovering around the $300 mark.
Intel's price cuts are very aggressive, to the point that they are the talk of the town in Taiwan. Every single motherboard manufacturer we met with asked us about Intel's price cuts and, more importantly, how AMD would respond. We've been told that AMD will respond with a series of price cuts of its own, the questions when and how much remain unanswered. Next week, in Taipei, AMD will be speaking with many motherboard manufacturers about its response to Intel's threat.
Despite the lower pricing on the Pentium Ds, it's not like Conroe ends up being all that expensive. The entry level E6300 and E6400 chips are both priced at $183 and $224, respectively, which is far from high. As attractive as the Pentium D's pricing may be, Conroe's performance and lower power consumption may still end up driving more demand than there is supply.
For the Dells of the world, Conroe availability shouldn't be too much of an issue because companies like Dell get first dibs. For years of not going with AMD, all while demanding something more competitive from Intel, you better believe that Dell is going to soak up every last Conroe that it can.
The problem then becomes what happens after Dell and HP have eaten their lunch, unfortunately the concern is that aggressive pricing won't be enough to reduce retail demand for Conroe. What we're worried about happening is a very small supply of Conroes on the retail market in late Q3/early Q4, resulting in much higher street prices than what you see in the table above. In the worst case scenario for Intel, Conroe's limited retail availability could result in a price to performance ratio equal to or worse than AMD's Athlon 64 X2.
The benchmarks we've seen show Conroe as a very strong competitor to the Athlon 64 X2, availability could be what limits how much lost ground Intel can regain before AMD has a chance to respond with K8L.
While performance here is extremely strong, we also haven't even touched on the overclockability of Conroe; from what we've seen, hitting above 3.5GHz on the highest end parts isn't too far fetched on air cooling alone. The absolute highest we've seen on air is 3.8GHz from a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. By the time Conroe officially launches, we'll be able to provide a full set of performance tests but so far we're seeing even more data to support the idea that Intel really has a winner on its hands.
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bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
He's probably using Opteron vs Zeon benchmarks where the Zeon is held back by its FSB when scaling to more CPU's. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to Conroe vs FX62's.peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Yes that's what I'm talking about. For every opteron you add you get more HT channels which can each connect one (or more using tunnel passthrough) I/O chips.
Whilst not in the opteron league, if 4x4 connects the processors by hypertransport as well as the chipset, it is reasonable to assume it works on either two HT links per socket, or splitting the HT between two peers.
Therefore the second AM2 socket can have it's "empty" HT connection talking to a SECOND I/O chipset. For that reason it has POTENTIALLY say double the I/O performance of a single Intel FSB.
Another point about this comparison generally is that these conroe benchmarks are of the EXTREME edition. That is unusual in the property that it has especially extra fast FSB compared to mainstream conroe. Therefore in benchmark comparisons of the non-extreme conroes, the fsb would be slower and may form a constraint which would alter (probably reduce) the relative performance difference between AMD and Intel seen here. The benchmarks will reveal.
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
The EE used was on a 1066 fsb.. same as mainstream Conroe.goz314 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Apples and Oranges... It will also cost vastly more than a Conroe-based system. Even if the performance of an AMD 4x4 platform is significantly higher, Intel would still have a significant edge in a performance/dollar analysis.
4x4 is currently vaporware and it's at least a quarter behind Intel's comparable quad-core processor roadmap. Conroe, on the other hand, is launching next month and will be available for a year before a 4x4 platform even sees the light of day.
Real hardware will always beat an marketing engineer's 'idea' no matter how good that idea looks on paper.
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Can I quote you on this and use it against the hypocrites? BTW, you got a link on where I can buy a Conroe?Josh7289 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Why do you have to buy the processor yourself to know how it performs? Real hardware was used in these benchmarks. AMD's 4x4 does not have any real hardware available yet, so it is vaporware as of now.bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I don't have to buy it but it does need to be available for purchase.Conroe isn't available either. So the vaporware argument could be used here as well.
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
AMD's 4x4 is much more vaporware at this point than Conroe.peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
However 4x4 is NOT a year away it will be here in 2006 from at least three motherboard vendors.
As for pricing criticisms, the AMD processor prices will be lowered WHEN conroe actually ships ;-)
I'm just pointing out that with Intel conroe, you have nowhere to go to scale up without switching to Xeon platforms and they're not particularly cheap.
What a 4x4 AM2 system will let you do is obtain a reasonably fast system initially using ONE fx2, and LATER spend a bit more and you have a MONSTER.
This phased upgrade may suit people who get paid monthly and want to upgrade gradually. AMD 4x4 will provide that upgrade path.
fitten - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
You do realize that you could have been doing this for ages... just buy any of the dual socket S940 motherboards, put one dual core Opteron in it today, then add another at some later time? This 4x4 flailing is just marketing. The only real gain is that it doesn't require registered/ecc memory.The FX line is still going to be expensive AND it's not like there's a ton of software (especially games) that use dual cores... much less quad cores (although this may change with time... but by that time, there'll be even better CPUs out, probably even *real* quad core chips).
Even being an AMD supporter, the 4x4 is not much more than a panic reaction by AMD in response to Core (and its variants). I, for one, will NOT be throwing money into a 4x4 system. At best, it seems like a one-off and a dead-end path before it is even released.