Is It Nearly Time to re-join the Dark Side?

maverik-sg1

New member
VR ZONE Reports:

Intel expects its forthcoming Conroe and Merom chips to deliver a performance advantage of at least 20 percent over chips from AMD that are slated to be released at the same time. It uses 14 pipeline stages instead of the 31 used by Intel's Pentium 4 processors. The microarchitecture also allows the processor to issue four instructions per clock.

Mav's history lesson - Peple may remember that the reason why Prescott was slower than the Northwood skt478 cpu's was becuase of this 31 stage pipeline - the shorter pipeline is also the reason why Dothan is so quick.

It uses advanced branch prediction technology borrowed from the Pentium 4 designs. Chips built on that microarchitecture will also share the 4MB unified cache. The combination of all those architectural changes will allow Intel to outperform AMD's planned offerings for the second half of 2006 without having to resort to adopting AMD's integrated memory controller design.

Mav's 2p: For those that dont know - unified cahce is where the Intel CPU will share 4MB of caches between two cores (instead oif giving them 2MB per core) - this will help in all sorts of ways (eg multithreeading applications where one core takes on the work requiring all the cache, the other core takes on the calculations)

Instead, Intel will count on its microarchitectural improvements and a faster FSB to deliver the 20 percent improvement in performance over AMD's chips, based on standard benchmarks.

MAV's Final Thoughts - All of a sudden there could be choice to make come the end of 2006 - the seduction of the dark side may be too strong :O I think ultimately the winner will be the best performing SLI/crossfire platform that u can overclock the nuts off.
 
I firmly believe conroe will at last be the cpu to edge intel back in front in the processor performance race,but it wont be much use to me without a decent dual gfx solution.Intel CF is murdered by amd CF and intel sli isn't worth mentioning.
 
Intel9xx.gif


Lest we forget that these revisions are in the pipeline:

Pentium® D Processors 930, 940 and 950 will undergo the following changes for the B-1 to C-1 processor stepping conversion:

ECPUID will change from F62 to F64

EC-1 is pin compatible with B-1

ENew S-specs for converting products

EThe advanced power management features Enhanced HALT State and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology will be enabled

EThe Pentium D Processor 940 change from the 2005 Performance FMB (130W) to the 2005 Mainstream FMB (95W)

EPentium D Processor 950 will also change from the 2005 Performance FMB (130W) to the 2005 Mainstream FMB (95W)

That wattage decrease will should allow sub-zero load temps when overclocked when using Mach2 GT or better cooling.

All of a sudden the CPU race is very interesting again.

Like Thickbrit says though, unles the multi GPU solutions are sorted out sharpish all this could be academic, which is a real shame.

Mav​
 
I've also been looking at this. It's gonna really hurt me to move over to Intel if I decide to make the move. I prefer AMD and always have they work and they work bloody well.
 
It's fair to say here that I wll see how things fair out for AMD.

Reports suggest that delays to the new AM2 CPU's was down to a memory controller error that cause severe issues meaning a new spin-out of the cpu prior to going live.

Couple that with new motherboards that will not be what we (as overclockers) want in a system - and there's all teh ingredients for a shift in the balance of power.

Intel has to push for better SLI and XFIRE based systems else they miss the best window of opportunity for two years.

Mav
 
This isnt the first time Intel have promised the earth dont forget that they promised that NetBurst will reach 10 GHz with the Tejas Core in 2005 and that Prescott was gonna send AMD to the grave? The only that Prescott did is dig they own grave.

Intel way of Benchmarking is always using some Synthetic Benchmark optimized specifically to favour Intel Architecture (Though being Architectures of Short Pipeline, optimizations for Conroe should do something good for AMD too when compared to optimizations for NetBurst) over whatever AMD got
 
scorchio said:
This isnt the first time Intel have promised the earth dont forget that they promised that NetBurst will reach 10 GHz with the Tejas Core in 2005 and that Prescott was gonna send AMD to the grave? The only that Prescott did is dig they own grave.

Intel way of Benchmarking is always using some Synthetic Benchmark optimized specifically to favour Intel Architecture (Though being Architectures of Short Pipeline, optimizations for Conroe should do something good for AMD too when compared to optimizations for NetBurst) over whatever AMD got

Never heard of the Tejas core mate - tell me more.......

I see that this time with unified cache and ultra short pipes (the source of the Mighty Dothans power) the issue won't be the CPU, more of a point of the components around it - the added bonus of not having an on board memory controller ensure the risk of a cold bug is minimal also.

You only have to look at the Dothans success even thought it's been crippled by having to use an interface card to fit a decent mobo that Intel have all the ingredients. Thickbrits results on the current CPU are very promising also, these have not so much been let down by the cpu as they have the XFIRE set-up which is frankly not as good as the AMD.
 
Yeah, tejas was going to be awesome as far as i recall - but mostly a mobile chip. Very impressive - I waited with baited breath for it *not*

However, given the prices of these chips 3GHz xeon DPs at $850 or so was very sweet. I am personally very interested to see what the results from these conroe/merom chips will be. Although I guess it just shows precisely why a 1.2Ghz tualatin PIII was so good in a server or in a laptop and is still enough for general stuff.
 
maverik-sg1 said:
MAV's Final Thoughts - All of a sudden there could be choice to make come the end of 2006 - the seduction of the dark side may be too strong :O I think ultimately the winner will be the best performing SLI/crossfire platform that u can overclock the nuts off.

join me my son!
 
Conroe will be interesting to say the least. Currently fighting with heat on my 920, running dual prime (small FFT's) @ ~4.8 Ghz and ~1.48V under load will overheat my Mach II GT. It idles around -58 C, but within 10 minutes of dual prime it is hitting above -20 C. Some crazy heat output, but if they can get it under control with the next stepping, even the 9xx series cpu's really aren't too shabby.

Going to add another x1900 CF card sometime next month, it should probably kick some serious a*** :)
 
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