Intel Core 2 Duo 'Conroe' E6700 & X6800 Benchmarks
The Core 2 Duo 'Conroe'
Published: 22nd August 2006 | Source: Intel | Price: |
With the AMD Athlon series holding the performance crown for several years in most benchmarks, Intel knew that they needed to come up with something seriously special to fight back. In order to do this some radical changes needed to be made - bye bye Pentium, bye bye Netburst and bye bye Hyper-Threading...
The Conroe is manufactured in 65nm process that provides the processor with better performance per watt compared with the previous Pentium4 series processors. Using only 65 watts of power (+10w for the Extreme edition), the Conroe is significantly more efficient than the likes of AMD's FX-62, which consumes a total of 125w. Watt (sorry for the pun) does this mean for you? In short: lower temperatures, longer battery life for portable devices and in general - better 'overclockability'.
Other improvements of the Core 2 Duo 'Conroe' series over its predecessor include a massive 4mb of shared cache between the two cores of the processor. Sharing of cache may sounds like a negative point, however it is quite the opposite. By sharing cache, the two cores have direct access to each others information thus avoiding the need for one core to copy the information in its cache up to memory and then down to the other cores cache. It is also worth noting that L2 cache latency was reduced from 27 clocks (in the Pentium4) to 14 clocks to further improve performance.
One of the major performance advantages of AMD processors was down to the integrated memory controller on the processor. Intel has managed to find a work-around to reduce the latency from having their memory controller located on the northbridge, and have called it "Smart Memory Access". Smart Memory Access keeps the pipeline full of data at all times for greater processing efficiency.
Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost is an enhancement to the SSE instruction set. Previously 128-bit SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions were executed in two clock cycles. Core 2 processors equipped with this new technology are able to execute the same 128-bit SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions in a single clock cycle thus improving performance.
The pictures above show our E6700 and X6800 Conroe chips. On the surface both of these processors look exactly the same right down to the number of caps on the underside of the processor. Lets have a look at their specs...
The only visible difference between these two processors is the multiplier, so why the massive price difference of over £400 and the use of 'Extreme' in the chips name? Well to cut a long story short the X6800 has a totally unlocked multiplier (both up and down). This means that higher overclocks are easily achievable without the need for a motherboard capable of high FSB's and without needing to upgrade your memory or run it on a divider.
Enough of the talking. Lets run some bencharks!
| E6700 | X6800 | |
| Core Speed | 2.66ghz | 2.93ghz |
| FSB Speed | 1066mhz | 1066mhz |
| Multiplier | x10 | x11 |
| L2 Cache | 4mb | 4mb |
| EMT64 | * | * |
| Execute Disable Bit | * | * |
The only visible difference between these two processors is the multiplier, so why the massive price difference of over £400 and the use of 'Extreme' in the chips name? Well to cut a long story short the X6800 has a totally unlocked multiplier (both up and down). This means that higher overclocks are easily achievable without the need for a motherboard capable of high FSB's and without needing to upgrade your memory or run it on a divider.
Enough of the talking. Lets run some bencharks!
Most Recent Comments
You guys are putting out reviews like mad. Awesome job, good read. Keep up the great work.
soooooooooooo many reviews I love it!!!! awesome review guys!
mmm those benchies make me happy in the pants lol. Nice work on the review :)
Not to be a nit picker but I don't think the review is fair. If you used an Intel Pentium D 3GHz, it'd be more fair, but that's Dual Core vs Single Core..
Nice review though, overall.
Nice review though, overall.
A lot of those benchies are still single core. I kind of agree with you but the P4 D's were a bit of a patch-job operation from Intel. I think looking at old P4 vs was more of an illutrative thing tbh
..and i'm afraid at present we don't have a big tray of processors to choose from :p
As Kemp said, the comparison was for illustration purposes only to show what advantages could be seen from upgrading to the Core 2 Duo platform.
As Kemp said, the comparison was for illustration purposes only to show what advantages could be seen from upgrading to the Core 2 Duo platform.
Reminds me that I have an article here written about the true cost of conroe, its not only the cpu but also the board as well and now taking into account the depreciation of value on the AMD market, where lets face it most people will jump from. Does seem expensive. Still if you game then its gota be worth it
brill review - i see a motherboard review coming soon :p
Great review again Jim. Intel really have stepped up to the plate and given AMD the 'birdie salute'...bring it on!!! Although, Intel certainly have learned a lot from the opposition, it's just taken them a while to get there. :p - like reducing the pipeline length, and how the processor handles dropped/out of order instructions more effectively etc. Definitely a step in the right direction.:)
conroe sweetness:yumyum:
nice reveiw bro,conroe is really pimpin it up:cool:
Jason
nice reveiw bro,conroe is really pimpin it up:cool:
Jason
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