Intel's Core 2 Duo processors

Thats like saying a 512mb 7900 GTX and an Intel 486 will allow you to play FEAR with suitable frame rates. Of course the processor matters.

As for not being bling components since when did owning one of AMD's FX processors not at to your bling factor?

 

You're making an absurd analogy. The technologies are completely incompatible. But any system that could house 7900GTX is likely to be able to play fear at a halfway decent framerate, because that would be PCI-E. The best a better CPU gets you is a few frames once you start turning on the eye-candy.

Drop an FX-62 in, in place of a 3800+. And guess what? You'll gain maybe a couple frames. Actually, you can look at one of the graphs in this review to illustrate that exact point, with those exact CPUs!

If you're even in the same LEAGUE of CPU, the majority of games will play well or poorly depending on your graphics card instead. That was both Iago's point and my counterpoint. That doesn't mean there's no benefit to an FX-62 over a 3800+, it just means that benefit is not in massively superior framerates of games.

 

For me this is perfect timing. I'm no Intel / AMD fan either way. I've usually made my purchasing decisions based on the "best bang for my buck" angle. Conroe / Core 2 is the direction I'll be going as I'm looking something that gives me an all around performance increase in everything I do, i.e. dual core or hyper threading. I've been thinking about moving from my Opty 148 to either a Athlon X2 (3800+ was pushing my budget) or an Pentium D (930 was priced just right) in the next few months. The answer was an easy one for me, upgrade to a dual core processor for $500.00 (Intel) or $700.00 (AMD). Even if AMD cut's price's Core 2 looks better to me since it will be an improvement over my Opty. <- my 2 cents.

 

tbh zr_ox, Da Dego has a point. A friend of mine still uses socket 754 AGP system and he's happy with the way it runs. He put in 1 of those 7800 AGP cards and the frame rate he got was quite close to the equivalent PCI-E card (4-10 frames less). He can run oblivion pretty well @ 1280x1024...still chops a little bit but I'm guessing that's due to the AGP bus being a bit poo than PCI-E. With today's shader heavy games, Im not really surprised either.
The processor does matter somewhat though, obviously it has to work-out collisions, AI, physics, etc. etc. When I put the same 7800AGP in my system (with an Athlon XP 2000+ socket A) , Oblivion didn't run so hot :/ Again, I reckon it's due to the outdated AGP bus/CPU to northbridge interconnects more than anything else though. The GPU *does* send/recieve data from the CPU!! =]

 

Yea, absolutely. I cant understand why people are picking holes. Intel have been developing Core for YEARS most likely. They dont ship CPUs unless they know bloody certain they will work for a while. People are still using Pentium Pros in servers and stuff, that's 11 year old CPUs on "inferior" process technologies still going.

Nature: It's not pentium M at all, it's core 2.

 

hmmmm.... this means....goodbye Pentium brand. here comes CORE!!! what will become of the celeron brand?

 

there is nothing worth arguing. Intel > AMD. thats it, period. if you think AMD will serve you well with gaming, then go buy it. No one really cares. it doesnt change the fact that core is better than AMD.

 

Whoa!!!!!!! slowdown Fanboi! Nobody said Intel was better than AMD, At this current juncture Intel has the upper hand due to the "core" being newer than AMD's A64's....but look at the huge chunk of Intels business AMD took away from Intel. Intel is roughly 10times the size of AMD yet AMD achieved such a huge blow to Intel.

Also If you think that the "core" is the end all to AMD then you've got another thing comming, K8L will be out soon enough and well shall see how the low wattage A64's all to look forward to. Also People expected HUGE performance increases yet there where low 30%'s. People expected to be a final hammer blow but the reality is that Intel have finally caught up to AMD and have now evened the playing field. Obviously their newer hardware will be faster than AMD but it wasnt the HUGE ammount people were predicting.

I have to give it to Intel tho, they over came their demons and fixed all the problems they faced with their P4's....slow hot and inefficeient cpus and now thing of the past for these guys, now the real race starts.

 

/me sees this going into a flame war

 

i never said intel will always be better than AMD. its an endless race, amd will surely catch up one day. but at this point, core is the best out there and you cant deny it. who cares about which company is bigger? a better product is a better product. just look at what people said about stress test and stuff. those are some real nonsense. and please dont get me wrong, i ain't a intel fanboy. i am on an amd 4400 right now.

 

I don't have an FX series AMD. I don't have a duel core AMD. I don't have an Intel Core Processor.

Conroe is the next gen chip for intel. AMD on the otherhand have another socket in the works, and it's pretty well known now that socket AM2 is just a stepping stone to bigger and better.

I'm waiting for the next gen AMD chips before making a choice of my next rig. For now, i'm happy with what I have...it does college work, it plays games.

Ladies and gentleman, please raise your glasses, for the soon to come battle between the sucessor of AM2, and Core 2.

Let's hope it's a good one

 

Is it me or are these benchmarks, no where near anandtech's preview benchmarks.

I'm not that impressed really. The equally priced Conroe is really only a few fps faster than my Opteron.

 

I can't wait for more motherboards to support Conroe.

I'm hoping there will be an overclockable MATX board out soon.

 

Intel is likely to have the next evolution of the Core architecture by the time K8L arrives

 

I spent quite a bit of time using the E6400 in some general computing scenarios - my normal work system is an X2 3800+ with 2GB of RAM. File compression was noticably quicker, as was Photoshop CS2 creating some article images off a dSLR. Windows installation seemed rather sharp, but then I can't remember the last time I installed windows on an X2 3800+-powered machine. Most of the time, I'm installing from something with an FX-60/62, etc installed. General OS snappiness was not really any different (if I take into account that my work machine is on a dirty OS that's nearly a year old).

It's a tough question and it ultimately depends on your need. If you're a heavy CPU usage man (i.e. lots of photoshop/video encoding/audio encoding/distributed computing/folding) I'm sure that you're going to notice big improvements. If I was just looking at replacing my X2 3800+ with a Core 2 Duo to browse the internet, I'd save my money.

I doubt I'll be rushing out to upgrade my work system at the moment either, because it does everything fine at the mo'. Albeit a little slower than a mid-to-high end Core 2 Duo would...

 

Yes I was...my bad I was tired and irritable!

Your right, your right!

 

Can anyone pint me in the right directions for a good motherboard for these processors? Ive been using AMD for years and never stoped to look at there boards so know nothing aobut them and having trouble finding some.

 

I don't think there are many. Apprently, all 975x chipsets should support Conroe out of the box, but those are rare, and you are looking at very high end and very expensive ($200-$300).

Older chipsets like 945G etc. could support it, but many will require new BIOS updates to recognize Conroe and utilize it's power saving features etc.

But Conroe isn't even out yet. A few motherboards just happen to support it. I'm guessing - hoping - that when July 27th hits, motherboards will start rolling out like locusts in the Apocalpyse within a few days.

A lot have already been announced. I personally have my eye on a DFI MATX board with a X700 IGP (announced, not released) - here's hoping for MATX overclockability.

 

Thanks a lot, that post was very informative

I've been re-reading bit-tech's and some others review and I think I grossly underestimated Core 2 performance jump... I'll wait until next year for my next upgrade, but with Core 2, DX10 GPUs and Vista just coming at the same time, it looks like one of the most exciting upgrades I've ever done

 

The next few months are going to be pretty interesting as far as upgrading, with Vista and everything that comes with it - this is only the start of it