Power Consumption and Conclusions

Power Consumption

Idle power was taken at the Windows desktop while load results were taken from a dual-threaded CineBench run.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Preview - Conroe Performance - Processors 71

Remember the Pentium 4 and its horrid power consumption and performance per watt results?  Me either.  In our results, the idle wattage on the Conroe is actually higher than the Intel 965 and AMD Athlon FX-62 processor — a clear indication that our reference board isn’t doing something right.  Chances are our reference platform is doing something incorrectly in terms of power management, so we’ll dismiss those idle results for now.  What is worth looking at is the load wattage result — 186 watts on the E6700 vs. 256 watts on the AMD FX-62 processor!  Keeping in mind that the performance on the E6700 was almost always HIGHER than the FX-62, you can do that math to see that Conroe is blowing the X2 processors out of the water in terms of performance per watt. 

Conclusions

While we can’t close the book on the upcoming Intel Conroe processor launch just yet, we can get quite a bit of good information from all the benchmarks and data we have here.  I have to at least present the chance that since these parts were not provided by Intel in any way, the results could be completely bunk and worthless — but I doubt it. 

Performance

For all of those gamers, enthusiasts and techies that thought Intel was cherry picking benchmarks in their custom sessions from which performance numbers have been reported on before, I think you can clearly see that is not the case.  The gift left in my jacket pocket in Taiwan was able to show us that Intel wasn’t just teasing us when they said Conroe was good; damn good.  In everything from media encoding to high resolution SLI gaming, the Core 2 Duo processors were impressive to see in action. 

AMD is going to be in more than a bit of trouble come the end of July if they don’t have an answer to Intel’s Core 2 Duo product line.  The E6700 sample we tested with here was able to trounce the FX-62 in many cases, and came out the leader in nearly every test we threw at it.  The only exception was the ScienceMark benchmark written by a now AMD employee.  And did I mention already that we didn’t test the top Intel processor that is going to be launched next month?  The Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition X6800 is going to run at 2.93 GHz compared to the E6700’s 2.67 GHz and will no doubt add to the performance advantage Intel is seeing here.  I personally can’t wait to get my hands on one of them.

Pricing

Since the processors haven’t officially launched, pricing is up in the air, and we haven’t received official information from Intel on it yet.  However, based on information that is floating around the web, and assuming it is at least somewhat close to correct, Intel is going to be giving it to AMD on this front as well.  The E6700 we tested here, that bests the FX-62 that is currently selling for over $1000, has a predicted price of $530; nearly half the price!!  If Intel sticks with that price, and AMD doesn’t drastically lower theirs, the Core 2 Duo line up is going to tear AMD apart. 

Other information that is unconfirmed is that the X6800 Core 2 Duo Extreme is going to match the $999 price of previous Extreme Edition processors.  The E6600 is set to be at $316, the E6400 at $224 and the E6300 at $183.  Based on the performance results we saw here, all of the Core 2 Duo prices seem like a steal to me.  But, this is all hypothetical of course until the launch day and real prices and product availability are seen.

Final  Thoughts

I originally set out with this processor to see if Intel was indeed attempting to pull one over on us with their “benchmark sessions” they have been holding across the country, but instead I found that Intel has been underselling their own product if anything.  The Core 2 Duo E6700 tested here simply swept through the benchmarks, leaving everything in its wake; I can’t wait to run an X6800 through the paces to see how it performs. 

If AMD’s team hasn’t started perparing for this yet, they should be starting right about now.  And if any readers haven’t been hyped about the coming of Conroe, you should start that about now too.

UPDATE: We have published a full review of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 and now the Core 2 Extreme 6800 (running at 2.93 GHz) on the Intel 975X platform.  You can read the complete article by clicking over to here!!!

I have started a thread in our forums so you can discuss the article and the implications for Conroe next month!!

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