Core Duo Reaches the Desktop

rtt writes "AMD has long reigned the desktop CPU market due to Intel's offerings struggling to keep up in terms of performance and power consumption. Yonah is the predecessor to the Core architecture and is predominantly a mobile chip, and is used at the heart of Intel's Viiv technology. Bit-tech has an article about Yonah beating the top of the range desktop AMD chip, the FX60, clock for clock. From the article" 'When Yonah is running at the same clock speed as AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60, we found that it beat it into a corner in just about every situation.'"

Already on the desktop

Apple is aready using the Intel Core Duo T2500 in the iMac [apple.com], and the Core Duo and Core Solo in the Mac mini [apple.com].

Based on these and other benchmarks it would appear that Merom ("Core 2 Duo", the next generation portable processor, Conroe (the next generation desktop/workstation processor), and Woodcrest (the next generation workstation/server processor) will have quite a bit to offer.

every situation?

mp3 encoding and other floating point workloads are quite common. AMD wins hands down there.

Wake me up when it supports 64-bit

When it supports AMD64 instruction set, it will be worth a look. Until then who cares?

That would be the Conroe

AKA Core 2 Duo. Not sure on offical launch date, November I think. At any rate it's their high performance chip based on the Core design, targeted at desktops. Faster and has EMT64 (Intel's name for the x86 64-bit extensions). Limited testing on it at this point, since it's still engineering samples only, but AnandTech found it to be about 10-30% faster than a 2.8GHz Athlon X2 (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2713&p=1) .

Re:That would be the Conroe

A couple of weeks ago Intel announced they were moving up their launch dates. Here's the quote from the article [com.com]: "Three new chips, one for each of the Core market segments, will be part of the rollout: Woodcrest for servers in June, Conroe for desktops in July, and Merom for notebooks in August." Hopefully by November prices will have already started dropping.

Re:Wake me up when it supports 64-bit

You'd have to be a complete idiot to be using 64 bit on anything other than a server.

32 bits should be enough for anyone.

Re:Wake me up when it supports 64-bit

Until 2038, of course ;)

Re:Yeah.

I didn't think there would be any difference for everyday desktop use, but the system did feel a tad more responsive over all.

I see you used the official Gentoo benchmark suite.

Re:Here's who cares:

The Sempron [amd.com] processors are their low end, all sub-$100 from a quick glance at Pricewatch.

It's a play on words.

"When Yonah is running at the same clock speed as AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60, we found that it beat it into a corner in just about every situation." If this is true, it would be the first time intel made anything better than amd. But in the end, all that matters is that AMD's $200 chip outperforms intel's $200 chip.

Re:It's a play on words.

It's worth noting that the comparison is between the FX-60 running at factory speed, and a Core Duo running overclocked.

Uh

Core Duo has been available in a desktop machine for months. They are standard in every iMac.

Over the top

I think they go just a bit overboard in saying that Yonah beats the FX-60 "into a corner".. Most benchmarks had it either infront or behind by around 2-3%. Is it really worth forking out a few hundred dollars for such a dismal gain in performance? Does it have better performance-per-watt? That's what really seems to count these days anyway.

Match on Desktop perhaps but not as a workstation

From TFA:

Core Duo solves a lot of the short comings, but there is one major feature omission from Yonah's architecture: it doesn't support Intel's EM64T 64-bit extensions

and later:
The lack of 64-bit extensions may be a worry for some, as will the poor FPU performance - the latter showed up in our MP3 encoding test.

So if you are doing anything with a 64-bit, high memory, or FPU requirement, AMD still wins.

Dubious Test

As near as I can determine from reading the article, it proves that a Core Duo *slightly* outperforms an Athlon 64 XP2 when doing heavy number crunching with a 32-bit Windows application.

Comparing the same application build for 64-bit on Linux vs. 32-bit on Linux (or BSD) would have been a far more meaningful comparison.

Wait a minute...

First, I would hardly say it is beating it. The numbers are all close, but most the processes they are running are almost running into other limits beyond processing speed at this point. The differences are not that great and the chip still loses (and much more then it whens other tests) in anything that is single threaded.

The other thing we need to remember is pricing. I was checking prices the other day for 4200+ processors and D950 processors. While almost exactly the same price, right now the AMD would still be much cheaper because of RAM price differences (especially if you get large RAM sticks, I am looking for 2x 1GB) and motherboards. Find motherboards for AMD and Intel that I believe were equal in features had the Intel motherboard almost $20 more then the AMD one.

Now, while I cannot attest for the power consumption on Intel right off, AMD is releasing more energy efficient processors with the AM2 release, due in just a few weeks. There should also be a slight (5-10%) performance increase based off of information from reviews of the processors and boards while still in development (improvements may be better in production models), so I would not call this a win for Intel yet.

I am glad that Intel finally seems to be catching up with AMD, which hopefully will only lead to better competition between the two over time. I really do not like these speculative reviews (remember those Opteron 64-bit reviews before the first Athlon64s hit), so someone wake me up when Socket AM2 and its processor are out and the new line of Intel chips is actually available and not just a ramped up Yonah. Especially since the cost of the motherboard they used makes you want to cringe. (I have yet to have to break $100 on my motherboards.)

Just shows how selective statistics can lie

Ok, Intel is getting some game, 'bout freaking time. But this isn't an "AMD killer" by any means.

Notice how they only included ONE FPU intensive task and AMD (and several of the Intel products) schooled this mobile offering? Most reviews include a lot more balanced set of tests, this one obviously had their storyline written for them and was tailoring the tests to fit the plot.

And also, let us not forget that the STOCK benchmark numbers for this chip were anything but impressive, so they played up the overclocked numbers. However, while this chip does have some seriously intersting overclock potential it isn't the first chip to be massively overclocked. Just last week we were salivating over a budgie Intel chip that somebody overclocked into the world's fastest CPU. So why not include THAT firebreathing monster's numbers on the chart along with some seriously overclocked AMD parts? Perhaps that would't have had such a dramatic narrative? Ah.

Meanwhile, I'll keep comparing parts running at factory spec and waiting to see what AMD drops next week to compare current gen parts to current gen parts.

What the heck is "Intel's ViiV technology?"

It seems to be one of those mysterious things like IBM's "SAA" or Microsoft's ".NET" or Vitalis' "V7..." .

It's a secret miracle ingredient about which all that is clear is that you're supposed to think it's good without needing to know what it is, exactly, or what it does, or why it's good.

Intel says: With Intel Viiv technology, you control a highly integrated Intel platform designed for digital entertainment. That means you can: Take charge of your media. Share experiences with movies, photos, and music with your friends and family. Simplify your digital life.

It's sort of like saying "Texaco gasoline has CleanSystem3, which will help you score with hot chicks."

Will somebody please explain to me what technical characteristics of a processor allow you to "share experiences with movies, photos, and music with your friends and family?"

Unless that means it doesn't support DRM?

Re:What the heck is "Intel's ViiV technology?"

Unless that means it doesn't support DRM?

On the contrary, it means that it does support DRM. And not just DRM, but Treacherous Computing. In hardware.

That marketing blurb should read:

Intel says: With Intel Viiv technology, we control a highly locked-down Intel platform designed for protecting publishers' "Intellectual Property". That means you can: Let us take charge of "your" media. Share experiences with movies, photos, and music with your friends and family if we let you. Complicate your digital life.

It's 1984-style DoubleSpeak.

Sham

You know, I like the Core Duo, and would love to have one in a laptop or on a desktop. (If Debian isn't ready for x86-64, then x86-64 isn't ready for me.)

Probably the most impressive thing is that the T2600 out-guns Intel's flagship Pentium Extreme Edition 965 processor, even with the massive clock speed deficit. After effortlessly overclocking our Core Duo to 2.6GHz, it beats AMD's flagship Athlon 64 FX-60 into a pulp.

As others have pointed out, the Core Duo only beat out the Athlon64 FX-60 when overclocked. If the chip, when overclocked, was safe for production environments, then the chip would have shipped at a higher default clock speed.

The whole tone of the article is wrong...it seems more interested in Intel than in technology. Notice that the "most impressive thing" is that the Core Duo chip does better than a high-end Intel chip. The only negative thing they mention in the article is a reminder that AMD's AM2 architecture is supposed to come out next week.

They're misrepresenting the product. I have to wonder if they were paid for this review.

Core Duo Speeds

When Yonah is running at the same clock speed as AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60, we found that it beat it into a corner in just about every situation.

In other words, the Athlon 64 ran fine - it just needed a bit more time to cache up to it.

Enter obligatory comment

Entry obligatory AMD zealot, "intel can't possibly make something better then AMD" comments here _______.

Seriously, I'm sick of the overly zealous statements when it comes to "OS vs. OS" "Company vs. Company" etc. debates. Why is it so threatening when another companies/organizations happen to produce something better than your favorite company/organization?

Sometimes intel will get it right and sometimes AMD will. Deal with it.

Ya, I know. This is probably eligible for flaimbait and/or troll mod points. Oh well, I just needed to get this off my chest.

Two Words

Geek Religion

You're sick of techie holy wars. But you're reading /. comments? If you can't stand baseless bickering over meaningless arguments, it's best to probably stay away from the Comments section of this site.

Let's Get A Few Things Straight about Yonah

Yonah = "Core Duo/Solo"

Conroe, Merom = "Core 2 Duo/Solo"

The Woodcrest, who knows?

Conroe, Merom, Woodcrest = "Next Generation Architecture" = "Core Architecture"

Although Yonah is the "Core Duo/Solo," it is not actually part of the "Core Architecture."

Capisci?

Re:Lies! Lies and slander!

Dell.