Benchmark Results
These benchmarks were run on a Conroe system during the Intel demonstrations. We collected the results, and then compared them later to those from an optimally configured Athlon FX-62 system in our own test labs. This leads us to a couple of caveats about interpreting the results.
First, due to the tests not being done under identical conditions, we can’t guarantee that the configurations and driver versions for the AMD and Intel systems match exactly. Until we can test this new Intel processor in our own labs, unhindered, we can’t drawn any sure conclusions about system performance and benchmark results.
Second, the Conroe processor model we tested was not the top-of-the-line model in the Core Duo family, and it is also not yet the production model. By the time Intel makes its official product launch, the company plans to include an Extreme Edition among its offerings, which is expected to deliver higher performance than we measured with this test processor. Which performance factors Intel plans to tweak, and by how much, isn’t yet completely clear. It’s possible we might see a higher FSB clock at 333 MHz (1333 QDR) later on, because the 975X chipset can support it. It’s also possible we might see Intel switch to faster core clock speeds - 2.93 GHz is expected, with higher speeds to come.
In our benchmarks, the Conroe goes head to head with AMD’s latest and greatest processor : the Athlon 64 FX-62. We ran a total of three test runs. In the first run, we paired up the Athlon FX-62 2.8 GHz with standard DDR2-800 RAM, according to AMD specifications. In the second run, we exchanged that standard RAM with special, high-speed SLI memory developed jointly by Nvidia and Corsair. The concluding run featured an overclocking test ; to extract maximum performance, we overclocked the Athlon 64 FX-62 from 2.8 GHz up to 3.0 GHz, and also used SLI RAM as well.
We tested the AMD processor using an Asus M2N32-SLI motherboard, with an MSI RX1900 graphics card built around the AIT X1900XTX chipset.
The test systems used an ATI-based graphics card built around the X1900XTX chipset.
