Art Of Geek

Pre-release Intel Core 2 Quadro benchmarked

September 11th, 2006 at 12:36pm madgunde

Tom’s Hardware has posted detailed benchmarks and comparisons of the upcoming Intel Core 2 Quadro quad-core cpu vs. the Core 2 Duo/Extreme, Pentium Extreme Edition and AMD Athlon 64 FX. In addition to the benchmarks, they have some interesting observations about the state of the x86 CPU war between Intel and AMD.

While the unreleased Intel quad-core chip has a very promising showing in the application, media and math scores, it doesn’t appear to be the optimal choice for gamers, most likely due to the penchant for game developers to only optimize for a maximum of two cores. Regardless, the chip shows some very impressive performance scores which will no doubt only get better over time as applications and games get written to take advantage of more than two cores. One thing is for certain, Intel is hitting AMD back where it hurts and AMD is going to have to work hard to try and regain the performance crown since ceding it to Intel.

Tom’s Hardware thinks that Intel won’t be able to squeeze any more cores into the package using the current dual-core dies, and provides some insight on how Intel will progress from here:

It is thus safe to say that Intel has reached its limit with dual dies and four cores with 65-nm production. A slimmed-down version with 2 MB temporary storage each would make four chips feasible, but then the maximum power dissipation of over 200 W would no longer be economically justifiable. We are confident that the next step will be to get four processors on a single die with shared L2 cache.

But that is just the beginning. The conversion to 45-nanometer production technology is slated for mid-2007, and starting in 2009, thanks to EUV lithography, Intel plans to manufacture 32-nanometer devices, at which point - if everything works as envisioned - the company could have a two-year technology edge over most other chipmakers.

It’s good to see competition is alive and well in the microprocessor space. It’s amazing how much Intel has changed from a few short years ago when they were happy to focus on incremental increases in clock frequency to boost performance. Many recall the initial Pentium 4’s which were outperformed by the older Pentium III chips at the same clock speeds, and saw it as proof that Intel was losing it’s ability to innovate. With the shift to the Core architecture, Intel has proven that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The days of single digit performance improvements appear to be behind us:

For me, working with one of the first quad core systems was amazing. No matter how many applications you run at the same time, the system reacts to user commands quickly. Some applications require half the time to finish tasks. To me, it’s like being catapulted a year into the future and is unlike the past few years when computing power increased only marginally. Intel pumped out 30% more performance with Core 2 Duo and will double that again with Core 2 Quadro soon.

I have to say, I’ve been very impressed with the Intel Core Duo in my MacBook Pro. I don’t ever remember seeing such a noticeable performance boost when upgrading from one computer to another, mind you I kind of skipped a generation on the Mac side, having never owned a PowerPC G5 based machine since they never did build a PowerBook G5. But the fact that I am using a notebook makes the performance that much more impressive. If Tom’s Hardware is to be believed, it won’t be the last time I feel that way.

So where is AMD’s response to the Intel Core 2 Quadro? The article closes off with a sneak peak of AMD’s 4×4 platform as provided by AMD themselves, who were unable to provide any release details, but Tom’s Hardware expects them “…sooner than later.” Meanwhile, Intel is expected to throw down the Core 2 Quadro gauntlet around October of this year with a pricetag of $1,000 US for the top-end 2.66GHz part. With Apple choosing to go Xeon in the Mac Pro, and notebook-class Merom Core 2 Duo in the new iMac, it has yet to be seen what plans Apple has for the Core 2 Quadro, if at all. A quad-core headless iMac would be on many Mac geeks Christmas lists if it were to materialize. Maybe in the form of a cube?

Entry Filed under: Computing, Hardware