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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Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
You can't really compare our test results to those found on other sites simply because I'm not sure what testing methodology was employed, as well as due to stated differences in hardware (e.g. HDD differences can impact Office Productivity tests considerably). You'll notice that our numbers are in line with what we've published previously for SYSMark 2004.The one thing I can guarantee is that the AMD and Intel systems we tested were as close to the same spec as possible so the numbers are directly comparable to one another, which is what matters the most.
Take care,
Anand
fikimiki - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
I understand 3% difference, but not 20% because of WD Raptor and SLI configuration. RAM is the answer so I wait for benchmark with CL4 and CL3.It is also important to see 64-bit performance for both competitors.
Gary Key - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
It is also the answer for Intel to some degree. I think you will understand this once the NVIDIA 590 Intel memory benchmarks are available along with production level 965/975 boards capable of running the Core 2 Duo at 3-2-2-8 at 800MHz, something AMD is not capable of yet. ;-) Our initial memory tests were set to each board's default settings, the way a typical system will delivered to the customer, this ensured there were not any "unbiased" tweaks used for either system.
Accord99 - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Why do you expect it to be more, not when CAS4 vs CAS5 has barely shown more than a few percent benefit. Here a couple of reviews using CAS4 DDR2-800. The FX-62 scores 220 and 219 respectively:http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/cpu/1494/socket-a...">http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/cpu/14...2-le-nuo... (with 36GB Raptor)
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/print.php?cid...">http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/print.php?cid... (with Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB)
neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Just read Toms Hardware review and from that comparison to this in FEAR min FPS it looks like the 2.66 vs the FX-62 is only a small difference of around 5fps with conroe wining. Based on that and Anands article I think its clear to say that a 2.93 conroe only going around 270mhz more over its 2.66 offers more performance in terms of clock cycle performance then what the FX-62 clock for clock can do. If you see the results you can see that the 2.66 conroe is 58fps on min FEAR bench and Fx-62 is 53, and they also have the FX-62 there OC to 3.00 GHz and its result was 55fps, notice the OC FX-62 gains only 2 FPS in min fps FEAR bench and the Conroe 2.93 vs the Fx-62 gains 27 fps in the min fps FEAR bench.That tells me that the increase in clock for clock performance on conroe scales much higher in performance then AMD FX-62. The FX-62 on Toms was running at 200 MHz more and only 70 MHz difference in the 2.66-2.93 conroe. Also keep in mind Toms review uses a RX1900 and Anand uses a 7900GTX, some performance difference there on those 2 video cards as well, also note Toms uses a 1280x1024 resolution using high settings.
It seems impressive that although each benchmark isn't identical that the conroe can increase in performance in a single benchmark just by going to the 2.93 from 2.66, very impressed how well it scales in comparison to FX-62.
So a 2.66 core 2 duo going to 2.93 core 2 duo extreme offers this much gain vs almost same clock increase on Fx-62 OC to 3.00 GHz is great, assuming im clear on the 2.66-2.93 is only a increase in clock and nothing else? Can you let me know if its just an increase in clock from 2.66 to 2.93 or is it clock and cache or something else in there? Im just trying to make sense of the fact that briefly comparing TOMS results to yours im seeing a better increase in performance when clock is increased on conroe over FX-62, thanks. If this is the case I can't wait for conroe 2.93 core2duo extreme so I can get my OC on this bad boy.
Which leads me to this. You guys at Anand had a chance to test this OC'ing the FX-62 by any and comparing? It would be great if you can elaborate on the difference in OC performance on each.
ashyanbhog - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
according to Anandtech, the conroe is expected in Q306, how many more days before AMD 65nm parts start rolling out? hmm not muchhttp://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
cant wait till somebody gets their hand on a 65nm Athlon and benchmarks it..... should see how Intel's oh so wornderful processor fares then! AMD was able to extract good performance jumps when moving from 130nm to 90nm, if they r able to do the same when moving to 65nm, they have Intel in a spot again!
130nm to 90nm gains
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7417">http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7417
zsdersw - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Apparently you don't realize that the speeds of Core 2 Duo at launch are not the only speeds that will be available as time progresses. Intel isn't just going to leave Core 2 Duo at the speeds available at launch.
Accord99 - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
So far, AMD only got an extra 400MHz/15% out of the transition out to 90nm. Conroe is expected out in late July, AMD's 65nm parts may be at the end of the year, and at lower clock speeds than the fastest 90nmp parts.termix - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
400MHz for SC, there are gona be 3GHz Opterons. But count DC chips too. Its 2 times bigger , so 2.6GHz vs 2x2.8GHz for avaible parts...Makaveli - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
impressive not really, just shows all the benchmarks we were seeing before were close to reality. minus the 40% faster when it closer to 20% faster on avg.Does this matter to me no. Will I still be buying a dual core opteron to put in my 939 board yes. I'll check back again in 18-24 months what is on the market then, until then just videocard upgrades for me. All u fanboys can fight over who has the better processor and larger e-penis till the next century. Does intel or AMD care probably not, why cause they make there money from the system builders.
Boys and there toys, you would think things would change as some of u guys get older. nope just like grade school.
Kudos to intel for finally making something people want to buy again.
Kudos to AMD for waking the sleeping giant.
This is good for us all, can u say cheaper cpu's.
Now i'm going to bed, Gnite all and may u all wake up 2morrow and see there are more important things in life!