Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Application Performance using SYSMark 2004 SE
We'll kick off our look at general application performance with SYSMark 2004 SE and as always, and we'll look at the overall score as well as the scores in each of the two suites - Internet Content Creation and Office productivity.
As we saw in our last preview of Intel's Core 2 Extreme processor, it posted SYSMark scores that were well beyond anything either AMD or Intel had been able to deliver in the past. With the final version of Core 2 silicon in our hands and a more stable/tweaked platform, we got even better numbers out of Conroe:
At the high end, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 was just under 36% faster than the Athlon 64 FX-62. In fact, even the $316 E6600 was around 18% faster than AMD's fastest. To add even more insult to injury the slowest Core 2 Duo in the test, the 1.86GHz E6300 is barely slower than AMD's fastest Athlon 64 X2.
The old Intel lineup of Pentium D processors is truly an embarrassment. Only the Extreme Edition 965 is remotely competitive and even then it can barely outperform the $183 E6300.
Drilling down into the SYSMark scores we've got the overall ICC results, which honestly are not much different than the overall scores we saw above. The Core 2 Extreme X6800 holds a 29% performance advantage over the FX-62 and once again, and the E6600 is able to outperform AMD's best by over 8%.
Intel's Core 2 performance domination continues in the Office Productivity portion of SYSMark 2004, with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 maintaining a 42.5% performance advantage over the FX-62. This time around, even the E6300 manages to remain competitive with the FX-62. This is Intel's new $183 part offering performance equal to that of AMD's $1,000 flagship FX processor; it's going to take a lot for AMD to recover from this deficit.
The individual SYSMark 2004 SE scores are graphed below if you're interested. The data is used in calculating the overall scores we've already discussed above:
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Corrected, it was a misprint.Take care,
Anand
Zorba - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Why is the article talking about how Intel is killing AMD on power consumption when AMD is on the top for both idle and load? If you are doing a performance/watt ratio you need to show that on the graph. This page (page 7) just makes the how article look completely baised.Calin - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Because the EE SFF processors were hard to obtain by Anandtech even for testing purposes. I'm not sure they are available in retail market any more than Conroe isAnand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
The Core 2 Extreme X6800 has a performance per watt score of 0.3575 in WME9 compared to 0.2757 for the X2 3800+ EE SFF. I'll put together a performance per watt graph now and see if I can stick it in there.Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I included the performance per watt scores I mentioned above in the review now, hopefully that will make things a little more clear.Take care,
Anand
JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I don't see the chart, Anand - I hope I didn't accidentally overwrite your change. Sorry!MrKaz - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Don't put it because it's a biased chart,Why based on WM9 benchmark? Why not one of the others?
Why put it now, if you never put it when A64 was killing the P4s?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Because AMD didn't real make a big deal about the performance per watt intiative back in the day. They focused on their price/performance instead.MrKaz - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
So?Just because Intel focuses now on that Anandtech must be obliged to put it?
So for you where was the price/performance (A64 vs P4) charts on Anandtech reviews?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, due to their making people aware of it, it has now become a issue.It was only after Prescott, that we became more aware that thermals were starting to get out of control and paid more attention to wattage numbers.
Price/Performance is not as hard to calculate.