Intel's Core Duo meets the desktop

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...desktop/1.html

[DeX]

Anyway, if this Core Duo thing doesn't actually use the Core microarchitecture then what does it use? What makes it perform so well? Is it just the 65mm die size?

[Highland3r]

Afaik, its Pentium M arc with a slightly shorter pipe length(?) dual core and shared cache

[ashikamlani]

this is a sign of the possible performance of Conroe

[specofdust]

An even shorter pipeline? Bloody nora, this things going to rawk in games, and suck poop in things like video encoding. If the pipeline is even shorter, not even a second core is going to make up the performance in things like video encoding.

[Tim S]

Ooops, I forgot to add the forum link to the article after publishing

Originally Posted by specofdust

An even shorter pipeline? Bloody nora, this things going to rawk in games, and suck poop in things like video encoding. If the pipeline is even shorter, not even a second core is going to make up the performance in things like video encoding.

But it clearly performs well in Video Encoding and beats K8 clock-for-clock, as demonstrated

[DeX]

Originally Posted by specofdust

An even shorter pipeline? Bloody nora, this things going to rawk in games, and suck poop in things like video encoding. If the pipeline is even shorter, not even a second core is going to make up the performance in things like video encoding.

Well it seemed pretty quick in the XviD test to me.

So if this is just an improved Pentium M then how much better Conroe be? When will we get to find out?

[Da Dego]

Hmmmm... the shared cache poses security risks for anyone planning on running this in any type of 'server' style environment.

The power features are NICE....

Price is comparable. I would have liked to see it a bit cheaper. Still, a very nice offering as an intermediate step over to Conroe.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Da Dego

Price is comparable. I would have liked to see it a bit cheaper. Still, a very nice offering as an intermediate step over to Conroe.

It's due for a price drop very soon, according to the link to TechReport on the final page.

$637 to $423...

[Tim S]

Yonah is a modified Dothan, simply put. It solves many of the shortcomings in the Dothan architecture, while improving many other areas too. There are still some issues though, as mentioned in the article. Some SSE2 instructions have been optimised and run around 30% faster. There is also the inclusion of the thirteen SSE3 instructions, and the chip has the ability of instruction grouping in order to improve performance further.

Hopefully this explains why the performance is so good.

[Highland3r]

Shared cache also hurts multithreaded performance on this CPU, not a huge amount but its noticable.
One major advantage of Yonah is that its pin compatible with Merom, so its a case of out with the old in with the new! For those people who go the Yonah root for whatever reason, its an easy upgrade to coroe esq performance.

Conroe's looking to be mighty, still can't help but feel it'll be weak in the same areas as yonah/"dothan" are though, however until official benchies are out thats just speculation...
Hoping to get a Dothan vs Yonah vs X2 vs Opty/SC A64 compare done in the near future, will be interesting to see the results....

[specofdust]

Originally Posted by bigz

Ooops, I forgot to add the forum link to the article after publishing


But it clearly performs well in Video Encoding and beats K8 clock-for-clock, as demonstrated

Woops, so it does, that's curious, but very impressive. Must finish reading articles before posting comments on the CPU's they're about

[rupbert]

Are people going to buy this over the soon to be released Conroe? Is the Conroe going to be that much more expensive?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by rupbert

Are people going to buy this over the soon to be released Conroe? Is the Conroe going to be that much more expensive?

Well, rumours suggest that you can stick a Merom in the AOpen board with a BIOS flash... I can't remember where I saw that though.

[Highland3r]

Originally Posted by bigz

Well, rumours suggest that you can stick a Merom in the AOpen board with a BIOS flash... I can't remember where I saw that though.

Yup you can theres compatible bioses floating about now

[Ramble]

Interesting results. I may have to go for a Conroe when it debuts.

I especially like the overclockability, my chip seems to hit 2.6 and die above that, which sucks a little.

[Wrigley1]

It's worth noting that these have been in Macs for a while now, so it's not as if this is the debut of the processor. It seem like they tested it out in Macs first, and I can tell you, the Core Duo in the iMac is very good at video encoding.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Wrigley1

It's worth noting that these have been in Macs for a while now, so it's not as if this is the debut of the processor. It seem like they tested it out in Macs first, and I can tell you, the Core Duo in the iMac is very good at video encoding.

There's no denying that the Core Duo has been around for a while, but we've been waiting for a decent motherboard to really test the chip in, AOpen's board fits that bill pretty well.

[hitman012]

Nice article, shame you didn't have the time to put the chip under phase

Originally Posted by specofdust

An even shorter pipeline?

I thought these had the same pipeline length as Dothan?

[specofdust]

Originally Posted by hitman012

Nice article, shame you didn't have the time to put the chip under phase


I thought these had the same pipeline length as Dothan?

I was just going on what highland3r had said, which was that it was a P-M with a shorter pipeline(he did say afaik though, shoulda looked into it I guess).

Everything I knew about the P-M told me that it wasn't very good at encoding and linear tasks, due to such a short pipeline. I would have thought a further decreased pipeline length would have made the Core Duo downright terrible at encoding videos, and I still find it strange that it's so good.