Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
CPU Bound Gaming Performance
While we always try to run our gaming benchmarks in CPU reviews as a balance between being CPU and GPU bound, there is some merit to using CPU bound gaming scenarios as a true measure of the gaming power of a CPU.
The previous pages of gaming benchmarks were run at 1600 x 1200, which struck a good balance between being CPU and GPU bound on our CrossFire setup but here we’re looking at exactly how good of a gaming CPU the Core 2 Duo is. By running these tests at 640 x 480 with the same CrossFire setup as before we’re ensuring that the performance bottlenecks in these titles shift as far as possible from the GPU and onto the CPU.
These tests aren’t designed to tell you how fast these CPUs are at running these games, but rather how quickly they can run through the physics and AI code when not waiting on the graphics card at all.
We chose to look at two CPUs: the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Athlon 64 FX-62, to get an idea of how strong each architecture was at pure physics/AI processing in games. We also omitted any games whose performance didn’t change by dropping the resolution from 1600 x 1200 to 640 x 480 (meaning that those games were already predominantly CPU limited in our previous tests).
| CPU | Quake 4 | HL2 Ep 1 | F.E.A.R. | BF2 |
| AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 | 156.7 | 170.0 | 164.0 | 108.7 |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 | 192.5 | 263.5 | 236.0 | 142.3 |
| Advantage (Intel) | 22.8% | 55.0% | 43.9% | 30.9% |
In terms of sheer ability to process physics and AI as well as feed a hungry graphics subsystem, Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 is anywhere between 22 and 55% faster than AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62.
While this doesn't mean much for real world gaming, it does cement the fact that Intel's Core 2 processor is significantly faster at the type of code current 3D games will throw at it. The very same benchmarks that Intel used to complain about favoring AMD, now favor Intel just as much; oh how times have changed.
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arachimklepeto - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - link
And what about noise Core 2 Duo fan(decibels)?bmaamba - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - link
Hi,Acc. to Toms hardware, for EIST to work, setting in Control panel has to be changed from "desktop" to "portable/laptop".AT guys, was this done? If not, how about putting it in the "Power consumed" graphs?(acc. to Tom(if i rem. right), least power in this mode is about 25watts by core 2 duo!!!).Also anyone knowledgeable, is this setting available in Linux?
Also, how about putting XP X2 3800+ EE in the encoding benchmarks (along with core 2 duo 6300)?
Thanks
Ed
PS.Price and power consumed when idle are v. imp. to me.
herkulease - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Unless I missed it what are temps like on these.Justin Case - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
What the heck is a "composite score"...? What are the units? How about giving us rendering times (you know, minutes, seconds) and render settings, so the numbers actually mean something...?rahvin - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Where's a good 64bit comparison on Linux and a LAMP stack run at 64bit? There hasn't been a serious linux server benchmark posted.BikeDude - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
I'd love to see some timings from a C++ compiler or two... Looks like I'll have to revise our standard developer PC configuration.--
Rune
kmmatney - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
"Jarred that would be great to see. The E6300 and X2 3800+ seem close, but the final AMD pricing and the overclocking potential of each could really make either the clear winner for performance per dollar in the midrange segment."Yes - this is the test that most people want to see. I';m sure a lot of people are like me, and don't much care about any processors over $200. We want to see that the low end can do!! The AMD X2 3800+ is going to be even lower priced than the E6300, so there may be a good battle at teh low cost end.
aznskickass - Sunday, July 16, 2006 - link
Battle? What battle? The war is over my friend. ;)The E6300 wins hands down vs X2 3800+, even more so once both are overclocked:
http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-...">http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-...
Jeff7181 - Saturday, July 15, 2006 - link
Would have been nice to see a Core Duo CPU in there too just for comparison for those of us with laptops who might considering spending $200 on a Merom if it would increase performance 10-20% over a Yonah with the same power consumption.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Link: http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=316...">http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=316...
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-10/intel-core-...">http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-10/intel-core-...
Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz is approximately 15% faster than Core Duo T2600 2.13GHz, in addition to the fact that 4MB cache versions are 3% in average faster, it looks estimation of 10-20% faster per clock than Yonah is right, even with the 2MB cache version.