Intel Core 2 Gaming Performance

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Intel Core 2 Gaming Performance - We test Intel's Core 2 Duo and Extreme using real-world gaming. Don't let a bunch of canned benchmarks lie to you about gaming performance, real gameplay experience tells a different story. Unless of course you game at 800x600.

Let's just cut to the chase. You will see a lot of gaming benchmarks today that just simply lie to you. That is right, you will see frames per second numbers that are at their best total BS, and at their worst a terrible representation of what difference a new Intel Core 2 processor will make in your gaming experience. The old ways of video game benchmarking do little to tell you about exactly how a new CPU will impact how you play your games or what experience your system supplies to you. Having more CPU power is a very cool thing, but being able to utilize it is not an easy thing to do now days.
 
We will do some OCing next week, but we are waiting to get some lower clocked CPUs into our hands.
 
Let me start by saying HOLY CRAP! All those biased benchmarks turned out to be nothing. Yes they are now on PAR with AMD...but thats it in gaming. Heck I own a P4 and after seeing this, I wouldnt spend that money on C2D. I'm going AMD with the price/performance at the end of the month. Way to go Intel! Hype it up some more!! :mad:
 
Hmm why does this not suprise me? Hats of to HardOCP for not believing the canned benchmarks and proving that intel was full of hot air. I'm not a huge AMD kiddie or anything, but seriously they WAY overhyped the Conroe. Oh well looks like I'm going AMD because of better prices. Yay competition! Consumers win!
 
PC Surgeon said:
Let me start by saying HOLY CRAP! All those biased benchmarks turned out to be nothing. Yes they are now on PAR with AMD...but thats it in gaming. Heck I own a P4 and after seeing this, I wouldnt spend that money on C2D. I'm going AMD with the price/performance at the end of the month. Way to go Intel! Hype it up some more!! :mad:

hmmmm.....

a $1,000+ FX62 CPU or a E6600 2.4ghz Conroe OCd a bit to match the performance at LESS than half the price. Tough decision!
 
^^ Yeah but thats the price before the official launch of conroe. AMD prices will be far lower afterward as said by Kyle himself.
 
scientificTHEgreat said:
hmmmm.....

a $1,000+ FX62 CPU or a E6600 2.4ghz Conroe OCd a bit to match the performance at LESS than half the price. Tough decision!

Dont forget AMD CPU's can overclock too! $170 for an X2 3800+ overclocked I think would be fine. Not to mention Intels bullmarks (benchmarks) pisses me off!
:mad:
 
scientificTHEgreat said:
hmmmm.....

a $1,000+ FX62 CPU or a E6600 2.4ghz Conroe OCd a bit to match the performance at LESS than half the price. Tough decision!

No matter, an overclocked Opteron 175 matches THAT performance at the same price.

That knife cuts both ways.
 
PC Surgeon said:
Dont forget AMD CPU's can overclock too! $170 for an X2 3800+ overclocked I think would be fine. Not to mention Intels bullmarks (benchmarks) pisses me off!
:mad:
This is true
Go with what you like! It's the American way
 
haha knew it sure conroe is a good processor but its simply catchup in gaming.

FUnny thing is when AMD makes those cuts the price for performance crown will still probaly be in AMD's court.

This makes me glad I'm waiting on quads in 07
 
Well considering the 7900 GTX OC is the bottleneck in these benches and not the CPU the results are exactly as expected.

This would have been more interesting if they had showed in addition to these processors the E6600 and the PEE 965.
 
haelduksf said:
No matter, an overclocked Opteron 175 matches THAT performance at the same price.

That knife cuts both ways.
Indeed it does. Enjoy yourself, after all this is only hardware we are talking about.
 
hahah yaaaaay. ive never replied to an article-thread but yay. finally some real data, it was painful for peeps to be asking me if i was gonna be making a core2 system... like no. why would i? the platform costs more, im more familiar with amd + all the lead time in the way the bioses and mobos have been built by dfi and asus in the last year or 2 will end up with mature boards for when i go am2. so yea, im happy that now the playing field is level. it will allow more processors, price points and all that. PLUS: my next macbook pro will be awesomesauce. but my main machine, my watercooled, sli'd desktop will alwasy be amd. and im waitin for 65nm before i go am2 homies!

good work [H], you did me proud!
 
coldpower27 said:
Well considering the 7900 GTX OC is the bottleneck in these benches and not the CPU the results are exactly as expected.

This would have been more interesting if they had showed in addition to these processors the E6600 and the PEE 965.

The 7900 GTX OC was not a bottleneck in the evaluation. As you can see there is room to spare in some games. Plus, it is certainly not a bottleneck in the Apples-to-Apples tests at a lower resolution with no AA and no AF. This evaluation concentrated on the real-world gaming performance experienced between the CPUs, basically what the gameplay differences are.
 
coldpower27 said:
Well considering the 7900 GTX OC is the bottleneck in these benches and not the CPU the results are exactly as expected.

This would have been more interesting if they had showed in addition to these processors the E6600 and the PEE 965.


The GPU is the bottleneck in these benches if I had to guess, not the CPU... with an SLI 7900GTX OC comparison we would see very different results, as exhibited by user benches previously. The GPU is crippling the system in these :(.
 
Very interesting :) Makes me feel a little better after piecing together an AM2 based system (thanks again for the M2N32 review guys :))

Definately looking forward to the OCing results Kyle :cool:
 
How come you guys tested with the video card at a higher res (1280x1024) instead of a much lower resolution of say 640x480? How about a quake 3 bench?

when you're using a higher resolution, with AA and Anistropic filtering, its easy to see that the GPU was the bottleneck.

and guys, to be fair, its not like Intel really had that big of a marketing hype for conroe, not like Nvidia and their 5xxx series. they just had some bullshit benchmarks.
 
I am most dissapointed in Intel over the IDF benchmarks. I honestly expected them to be better than that, but I can't hold it against them that bad since they all (AMD, nVidia, ATI) do it.

Ah well, comparing prices at stock speeds, Core 2 still wipes the floor with AMD.
 
CodeWaste said:
How come you guys tested with the video card at a higher res (1280x1024) instead of a much lower resolution of say 640x480? How about a quake 3 bench?

when you're using a higher resolution, with AA and Anistropic filtering, its easy to see that the GPU was the bottleneck.

and guys, to be fair, its not like Intel really had that big of a marketing hype for conroe, not like Nvidia and their 5xxx series. they just had some bullshit benchmarks.


Don't tell the truth, you will be called out as defending Intel.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The 7900 GTX OC was not a bottleneck in the evaluation. As you can see there is room to spare in some games. Plus, it is certainly not a bottleneck in the Apples-to-Apples tests at a lower resolution with no AA and no AF. This evaluation concentrated on the real-world gaming performance experienced between the CPUs, basically what the gameplay differences are.


I agree the videcard is not a biottleneck maybe you could run the gaming test again with a gx2 and see if there is a big difference?

to cover that base
 
These benchmarks show one thing; the conroe is a bit faster, but when it comes to gaming, it doesn't matter. They're are both fast enough to make the GPU the bottle neck. Your money is far better sunk into the GPU. You best bet is to buy what's cheap and OC it. Both brands OC very far.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The 7900 GTX OC was not a bottleneck in the evaluation. As you can see there is room to spare in some games. Plus, it is certainly not a bottleneck in the Apples-to-Apples tests at a lower resolution with no AA and no AF. This evaluation concentrated on the real-world gaming performance experienced between the CPUs, basically what the gameplay differences are.


I gotta say, I think once the next gen of video cards comes, we will see a much different story. In SLI testing configurations I have seen from users, there was a marked difference in performance with a higher level of GPU power... for single-card users, I think the review is spot-on though.
 
CodeWaste said:
How come you guys tested with the video card at a higher res (1280x1024) instead of a much lower resolution of say 640x480? How about a quake 3 bench?

when you're using a higher resolution, with AA and Anistropic filtering, its easy to see that the GPU was the bottleneck.

and guys, to be fair, its not like Intel really had that big of a marketing hype for conroe, not like Nvidia and their 5xxx series. they just had some bullshit benchmarks.

I don't write articles for people that game at 640x480.
 
CodeWaste said:
How come you guys tested with the video card at a higher res (1280x1024) instead of a much lower resolution of say 640x480? How about a quake 3 bench?

when you're using a higher resolution, with AA and Anistropic filtering, its easy to see that the GPU was the bottleneck.

and guys, to be fair, its not like Intel really had that big of a marketing hype for conroe, not like Nvidia and their 5xxx series. they just had some bullshit benchmarks.


The thing is, the article is trying to point out that with a current single-video card setup, the CPU power doesn't make a bit of difference really. Now, in CPU-intensive situations such as this from HardOCP: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTExMCwyLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== we can see a HUGE difference.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I gotta say, I think once the next gen of video cards comes, we will see a much different story. In SLI testing configurations I have seen from users, there was a marked difference in performance with a higher level of GPU power... for single-card users, I think the review is spot-on though.

We will run them again when I can get a G80 in my hands, until then, having one or the other does not make a difference in gaming.
 
enelson125 said:
Hmm why does this not suprise me? Hats of to HardOCP for not believing the canned benchmarks and proving that intel was full of hot air. I'm not a huge AMD kiddie or anything, but seriously they WAY overhyped the Conroe. Oh well looks like I'm going AMD because of better prices. Yay competition! Consumers win!


Please provide links to 'canned benchmarks' from Intel, as well as links to AMD's better prices. Thanks in advance!
 
Brent_Justice said:
The 7900 GTX OC was not a bottleneck in the evaluation. As you can see there is room to spare in some games. Plus, it is certainly not a bottleneck in the Apples-to-Apples tests at a lower resolution with no AA and no AF. This evaluation concentrated on the real-world gaming performance experienced between the CPUs, basically what the gameplay differences are.
Of course I am all in favor of real world performance, but then this review doesn't give men any more information then exactly what I expected. If the GPU is the bottleneck, which is almost always is in these new games, CPU don't really matter.

12x10 at highest Quality settings with no AA or AF except for Oblivion, at medium isn't exactly what i would have used to show a CPU difference.

A few more processors would have been nice.

If this is the style hard wants to take I want to see some benches using a Pentium D 915, 945, X2 3800+, and see if the pictures is the same.
 
JetUsafMech said:
Please provide links to 'canned benchmarks' from Intel, as well as links to AMD's better prices. Thanks in advance!
Anand had an entire article full of BS numbers from Intel on that rigged F.E.A.R. showing at IDF.
 
InorganicMatter said:
I think I'm the only person on this entire board that appreciates you guys realistic approach.

What are the chances of some Quad-SLI or dual-X1900 comparisons? If the processor is the bottleneck, then I'm curious as to what happens when you really loosen up the bottleneck.

Same question, do you play games at those settings?
 
Maaaan! I named my Beta Fish Merom and everything :(.

Good job on the review! I'm glad to see some real world numbers.
 
hmm...this changes things...kind of makes the X6800 look bad, guess we need SLI?

Couple more hours, let's see what everyone else's reviews are going to look like.

Anyway, nevertheless, I need a new rig. :D

Maybe this will scare people away now and we'll have some E6600's around on launch day.
 
Donnie27 said:
I respect you very much and don't want to say anything to get me banned, but maxing out video cards is just as useless. I would have liked to have seen those 1280 X 1024 since a lot of folks use that as a common setting. I'm rushing out to buy a Conroe E6600 and games only make up about 40% of what I use my computer for.

Check the apples to apples page....

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTEwOCw5LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

The fact of the matter is that true gaming experience is not impacted by these processors comparatively.
 
dajet24 said:
I agree the videcard is not a biottleneck maybe you could run the gaming test again with a gx2 and see if there is a big difference?

to cover that base

Maybe you didn't read the first page under "Background and how we tested"

The GX2 does not work correctly on the P5B currently.
 
CodeWaste said:
How come you guys tested with the video card at a higher res (1280x1024) instead of a much lower resolution of say 640x480? How about a quake 3 bench?

when you're using a higher resolution, with AA and Anistropic filtering, its easy to see that the GPU was the bottleneck.

and guys, to be fair, its not like Intel really had that big of a marketing hype for conroe, not like Nvidia and their 5xxx series. they just had some bullshit benchmarks.

Who the hell buys a FX62 or E6600 and games at 640x480? Its Intel Core 2 Gaming Performance Review.
 
Basically all this shows is that Conroe is the best all around chip, same performance in gaming, but faster in applications. Why get an AMD?
 
Donnie27 said:
Do you play games at those settings?


No, and that is not the point I am trying to make, as I said above. I just think that the benches were more GPU-bound than CPU-bound, and the article illustrates that a better CPU won't help in these situations. I think (yes, I am speculating, before I get called out for supposedly claiming fact to be my opinion) that a more powerful GPU setup would have shown off the CPU power more given that it is shown by HOCP's benches on the CPU-only front (encoding/etc.) that there is a difference in the CPUs' power levels. However, for sure in the current general market it won't help most gamers.
 
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