Intel Core 2 Gaming Performance

How a fan boy reads a review:

First, sight unseen, he performs benchmarks of the product in his mind. These are effected by his level of hype, and his loyalty to the brand being reviewed.

Second, he skims the review, looking only at a few of the benchmarks, and compares them to the benchmarks in his mind. If they are lower, he will flame he author, citing unverified somewhat unrelated benchmarks posted in a Korean forum.

The if the person hates the product, it goes the same way, only opposite.

Meanwhile the sane, chemically balanced people loose a bit more of their ever waning faith in humanity.
 
Ingonuts13 said:
This makes it pretty clear what is going on here.. Intel finally caught up to AMD in gaming performance. Its about fucking time now ! Do they want a cracker or something? :p
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At these higher resolutions there was no real catching up to do. Like i've said twice now, the Pentium 4/D is fast enough to keep up. The reason people think AMD has had such a lead in gaming is because they have been looking at the 800x600 resolution type reviews. Now we're going away from 800x600 to a higher resolution and think that Intel is just catching up. No, thats not the answer. The answer is the video cards aren't fast enough. The G80/R600 are aroudn the corner though and a SLI/Crossfire setup should show more of a difference in performance at these higher resolutions.
 
Babbster said:
Do you really think that doing a set of benchmarks at 640x480 or 800x600, or changing the chipset, will really quantify which processor is [x] percent better than the other?
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Not entirely, but it will give me at least a general idea of which processor will give me better performance.
Babbster said:
You may dislike the word "experience," but it's supposed to be what a "gamer" is looking for when playing a game. If two different processors provide the same gameplay results as one another in a standard situation (situation meaning resolution and detail level), isn't that good information to have? At least as important as which one pumps out the most fps in artifical, low-resolution tests?
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No, not really. because it only shows me the status quo. im not going to be playing the same game forever so if they can show me which processor is more powerful, then i can have some idea of which processor is going to give me better performace when new games come out, like crysis or T-cellfactor, or UT2007.
Babbster said:
When the [H] changed their benchmarking criteria oh those many moons ago, I was one of those who wondered exactly what the point of it was. Having experienced the way they do things ever since, I've learned that they're looking for exactly what I would look for in their hardware: A good gaming "experience." It makes perfect sense to me, but I suppose it's obvious that YMMV.
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That fine and I understand "different folks, different strokes". but don't cut out the raw data to make room for "experience" The Raw data is what I, and apprently a few others are looking for.
 
Ingonuts13 said:
Guys, take a look at all the reviews you are posting. The results at similar resolutions being shown here are basically the same. I dunno about you but 100pts in 3dMark06 is pretty much a wash to me. The fact is that if you are looking for straight gaming performance then, a cheap AMD or Intel is a great solution. If you have a decent AMD system already, there is no reason to run out and grab Intel.

Is the Core 2 DUO faster.... YES! The [H] review does not show anything skewed at all in their performance indication on the gaming side as it shouldn't. I am sure that if they were running SLI there would be slight improvements but then Kyle did mention that there were reasons they did not do so.

This makes it pretty clear what is going on here.. Intel finally caught up to AMD in gaming performance. Its about fucking time now ! Do they want a cracker or something? :p
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The short reply is that they ran more than games and AMD lost every one of them. Other sites show E6600 at 2.4GHz giving the 2.8GHz a run for the money and being faster more times than not.
 
cr0w said:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_core_2_performance/page15.asp

Conroe, FX, 965EE high res with x1900 crossfire.
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There!! See thats what i'm talking about! There is 1600x1200 with a Crossfire setup and the X6800 has over a 10 fps lead on the FX-62 in Oblivion. You notice how at 2048x1536 resolution the margin decreases. Its because you're falling back into being GPU bound again. Even SLI/Crossfire isn't powerful enough to show the true performance of these CPU's. You can see this because at 2048x1536 the difference falls back to within a couple FPS in most of those games they benched. You're really going to need G80/R600 before you start to see more of a difference with the current Conroe processors.
 
scientificTHEgreat said:
hmmmm.....

a $1,000+ FX62 CPU or a E6600 2.4ghz Conroe OCd a bit to match the performance at LESS than half the price. Tough decision!
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Opteron 165 for 263$= FX-62 preformace. You can't make that claim.
 
Donnie27 said:
The short reply is that they ran more than games and AMD lost every one of them. Other sites show E6600 at 2.4GHz giving the 2.8GHz a run for the money and being faster more times than not.
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This review is ONLY talking about games nothing else. If you look, there are other reviews on the front page benching AMD vs Intel. I never disputed the fact that one was faster than the other. All I am trying to say that I see nothing wrong with the review as it is written as it shows what it shows.
 
burningrave101 said:
I think you guys should check out this review that just went up. Tech Report is always one of the first sites i look for when a CPU is released because they always do a fairly extensive number of benches as well as including a good number of processors in the mix.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/core2/index.x?pg=1
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Pretty much as expected for mostly timedemo gaming benchmarks. Meh.

I like the introduction, power consumption and overclocking parts of TR reviews. Too bad he didn't overclock all the chips including the E6600, E6700 and FX-62. http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/core2/index.x?pg=16 <-- different from the [H] review.
 
Kudos for another awesome review, glad to see some 'real' bench marks. But does anyone know how these processors compete in rendering 3D 'stuff' such as Maya 3D, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave etc?
 
What this really boils down to is that new buyers should pick up Intel solution (unless AMD new pricing is a better value).

And for the existing high end AMD solutions for gamers should stay right where they are and save their dough.

That is pretty much it folks, move along nothing to see here (Officer Barbrady voice).
 
burningrave101 said:
There!! See thats what i'm talking about! There is 1600x1200 with a Crossfire setup and the X6800 has over a 10 fps lead on the FX-62 in Oblivion. You notice how at 2048x1536 resolution the margin decreases. Its because you're falling back into being GPU bound again. Even SLI/Crossfire isn't powerful enough to show the true performance of these CPU's. You can see this because at 2048x1536 the difference falls back to within a couple FPS in most of those games they benched. You're really going to need G80/R600 before you start to see more of a difference with the current Conroe processors.
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Which is probably why H was able to run Oblivion with a better Shadow setting?

Reading is a powerful tool.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Opteron 165 for 263$= FX-62 preformace. You can't make that claim.
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E6600 @ 3.6Ghz for $316 MSRP = FX-74 @ 4GHz for $1.4 million (give or take a few thousand lol) performance. You can't make that claim ither.
 
Wompa164 said:
Kyle makes his living running this site. For all intensive purposes, [H] is a business and should be treated as such. Kyle should be held up to professional standards and expectations from consumers, including legitimate criticisms. Kyle is not running this site out of the pure goodness of his heart, he's doing it because he's very passionate about it and he can make a buck doing it.
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Held to professional standards??? Give me one example of a site that puts more QA/QC effort into their testing...

 
CodeWaste said:
That fine and I understand "different folks, different strokes". but don't cut out the raw data to make room for "experience" The Raw data is what I, and apprently a few others are looking for.
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And, as evidenced both by the first page of the [H] benching and many posts in this thread, the data you're looking for are available all over the place. So, I wonder, why take issue with the way things are done here if you can get you want everywhere else? Especially when this article was done no differently than others in the past?
 
Ingonuts13 said:
This review is ONLY talking about games nothing else. If you look, there are other reviews on the front page benching AMD vs Intel. I never disputed the fact that one was faster than the other. All I am trying to say that I see nothing wrong with the review as it is written as it shows what it shows.
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The problem is the obvious goading and attempt at sensationalism. Anybody with half a whit knows that modern games at high resolution are GPU bound.

Writing an article with laughable, inflammatory rhetoric basically calling everyone else who has done a Conroe preview a liar is a transparent attempt to stir up controversy and make a name.

A more rational review would have started out with no premise (e.g. "they're all lying!"), and would have done reviews at various resolutions. As expected, due to Conroe being a faster CPU, the lower resolution benchmarks and benchmarks of slightly older games (curiously missing), and the higher resolution games on a high end SLI setup would have favored Conroe.

Obviously, benchmarks which are GPU bound would have showed little difference.

Then, in conclusion, the reviewer could mention that if you are playing current generation games in high resolution with a modern CPU and you only care about gaming then Conroe will not net you much (assuming you have a high end FX-62 or overclocked opteron, of course, which everyone does - right?) and you shouldn't worry about upgrading.

Instead, the whole review is unprofessional and clownish, and in the end has cost this site a lot of credibility with everyone but die-hard AMD !!!!!!s, who now think they've been vindicated.

I fully expect to see this review linked from that nimwith Sharikou's blog very promptly. It will be highly amusing to me.
 
jvrobert said:
The problem is the obvious goading and attempt at sensationalism. Anybody with half a whit knows that modern games at high resolution are GPU bound.

Writing an article with laughable, inflammatory rhetoric basically calling everyone else who has done a Conroe preview a liar is a transparent attempt to stir up controversy and make a name.

A more rational review would have started out with no premise (e.g. "they're all lying!"), and would have done reviews at various resolutions. As expected, due to Conroe being a faster CPU, the lower resolution benchmarks and benchmarks of slightly older games (curiously missing), and the higher resolution games on a high end SLI setup would have favored Conroe.

Obviously, benchmarks which are GPU bound would have showed little difference.

Then, in conclusion, the reviewer could mention that if you are playing current generation games in high resolution with a modern CPU and you only care about gaming then Conroe will not net you much (assuming you have a high end FX-62 or overclocked opteron, of course, which everyone does - right?) and you shouldn't worry about upgrading.

Instead, the whole review is unprofessional and clownish, and in the end has cost this site a lot of credibility with everyone but die-hard AMD !!!!!!s, who now think they've been vindicated.

I fully expect to see this review linked from that nimwith Sharikou's blog very promptly. It will be highly amusing to me.
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Your opinions are noted. I am sorry you do not like the way we tested. There will be plenty of other sites that remove all other system limitations today to show you how fast Conroe is in your favorite games with the eye candy turned off.
 
jvrobert said:
The thing is that this same review could have basically been done on any previous generation of CPU ever since they started coming out with the hard-core GPU's.

t's a bit like basing a whole review of a new CPU around how well it compiles the Linux kernel, or how well it copies a 4G file from one disk to another, i.e. those tasks are IO bound. That makes sense, everyone knows that. Most people don't think of it but graphics cards are IO bound in the EXACT same way. The CPU sends them data, then has to wait.

What does it tell you about the CPU when you base an entire review around a task that is IO bound?

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with a review which includes a section (even a hefty one) saying "note that if you have a high end CPU and a high end GPU and you play modern games at high resolution, you won't gain much from upgrading to Conroe." This is absolutely the truth.

My problem is that this "section" of your review somehow ended up basically being the _whole_ review.

Edit: Yes, I did read the 3 page mini-review of movies, music, etc... Kind of pales in comparison to the 11 pager that's IO bound.
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Thanks for your opinion, I did understand from the first post that you have issues with our testing.
 
Babbster said:
And, as evidenced both by the first page of the [H] benching and many posts in this thread, the data you're looking for are available all over the place. So, I wonder, why take issue with the way things are done here if you can get you want everywhere else? Especially when this article was done no differently than others in the past?
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Cause they used to do things that way, and i used to send people here all the time for really good, high qaulity and complete information. Now i dunno? :(

I liked it when the articels were a little more technical in nature such as

This one

And no offense, but if you'd been here longer than 6 months, you'd know that this article was done much differently than in the past as you'll see when you follow that link
 
CodeWaste said:
Cause they used to do things that way, and i used to send people here all the time for really good, high qaulity and complete information. Now i dunno? :(

I liked it when the articels were a little more technical in nature such as

This one

And no offense, but if you'd been here longer than 6 months, you'd know that this article was done much differently than in the past as you'll see when you follow that link
Click to expand...

agreed
 
CodeWaste said:
Cause they used to do things that way, and i used to send people here all the time for really good, high qaulity and complete information. Now i dunno? :(

I liked it when the articels were a little more technical in nature such as

This one

And no offense, but if you'd been here longer than 6 months, you'd know that this article was done much differently than in the past as you'll see when you follow that link
Click to expand...

We have made a conscious effort to move our content in the direction we have. I truly think that more people are now days concerned with what performance will actually be delivered today rather than looking a year down the road or wondering how exactly the die works.

No offense taken. But you will likely be better suited getting the information you are looking for somewhere else. We are going to continue to focus on real-world results and the experiences that the hardware provides.
 
burningrave101 said:
I agree with you totally Brent but here is the problem. When you benchmark the games at these higher resolutions where you are more GPU bound and there is little difference between the processors it does show what real world performance is like for the average user with that setup at that resolution TODAY. It however does NOT give him a feel for how much faster processor A is compared to processor B when a faster video card comes out. When you benchmark at lower resolutions like 800x600 and 640x480 is allows the CPU's to shine more and show a difference between each other. No, people dont play at those resolutions but it shows which processor is faster in that game and by how much. Today the E6700 may be around the same speed as the FX-62 at those resolutions you benched with a 7900 GTX but what happens to the person with a SLI/Crossfire setup or the guy that upgrades to a G80/R600 down the road but keeps the same processor?
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How can anyone possibly know how the CPUs will perform with future graphics cards that aren't released yet?

Benching at lower resolutions will NOT tell you that information. Nothing can, until those cards are out and we can test them in person.
 
To be honest this just shows how much the graphics card companies are falling behind. Not only are they falling behind but they are charging record prices for inferior products. Honestly it is such a pain in the ass to swim through all the different variations of the same damn product just to get a lousy fps average at 1280x1024. To be honest, any decent system like the ones running these processors probably wont have a 17" crt. 1680x1050 is alot of pixels, and it's rediculous that we are seeing such close scores on systems that should be wildy different, turns out the limitation is "only" a $400 graphics card. It's kind of pathetic and it pisses me off. And dont give me this sli and cf bullshit either, your wasting your money if you arent using the $500 cards anyway, wtf happened to the days of "high end" cards selling for $300? Funny how the only part in computers that have drastically raised in price the last couple of years has been gpu's, complete bullshit.
 
So the conclusions are really twofold:
If you own a highend AMD64 X2 platform, there isn't much of an upgrade in the way of games to go Conroe. But Conroe does pose an advantage in none gaming apps.
If you're buying soon, watch for the price cuts and see what's the better bang for buck for your needs - Conroe or AMD64.
Im considering buying an X2 for my current platform, but these upcoming price cuts will have to be steep.
 
altcon said:
So the conclusions are really twofold:
If you own a highend AMD64 X2 platform, there isn't much of an upgrade in the way of games to go Conroe. But Conroe does pose an advantage in none gaming apps.
If you're buying soon, watch for the price cuts and see what's the better bang for buck for your needs - Conroe or AMD64.
Im considering buying an X2 for my current platform, but these upcoming price cuts will have to be steep.
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BINGO, we have a winner! :)
 
Umm Kyle,
Why no F.E.A.R?
It was touted as one of the games that demonstrate Conroes supremecy. Any chance of some samples?
 
altcon said:
So the conclusions are really twofold:
If you own a highend AMD64 X2 platform, there isn't much of an upgrade in the way of games to go Conroe. But Conroe does pose an advantage in none gaming apps.
If you're buying soon, watch for the price cuts and see what's the better bang for buck for your needs - Conroe or AMD64.
Im considering buying an X2 for my current platform, but these upcoming price cuts will have to be steep.
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With one huge limitation: that you play games with a video card limited setting (and you're not upgrading that part of the system, even after buying a $1000+ CPU :p), which unsurprisingly is not improved with a faster CPU. And to make sure that the review remains "real," you don't upgrade your video card later either because significantly faster video card(s) might disagree with the 7900GTX review on the front page. ;)
 
I agree with the altcon but I also see the article a little biased or well, no true answer begin given. The conculsions are very open ended. I mean no offense by this, i just felt kinda left hanging at the end wonder what [H]ard|Ocp thought was the best, best buy or clear winner.

Overall, I think Conroe is a better buy atm. It is just better overall, gaming is minimal and multimedia is fairly minimal. However, like altcon said, if you are coming from a x2 not worth upgrading. I came from a single core Opteron 146 and IMHO it was worth every penny.

I've been a loyal AMD !!!!!! for a very long time, AM2 is the only new AMD I have not bought at release. Sad, but core2 was just the better buy IMHO.
 
Wow, I can't believe how many people are complaining and arguing over NOTHING. Get a hold of yourself already.

The review does exactly what it was designed to do. It shows you exactly what a higher end but still mainstream system will do for you in gaming. It seems that Intel faniacs are getting all worked up because in gaming, Conroe is not putting the smackdown on AMD like Intel would have us all believe. HELLO, did anyone actually believe the benches Intel um I mean certain review sites were touting?

Conroe is no doubt going to put the hurt in AMD in other areas. But again, it is not going to be the bloodbath far too many people have come to believe.

...and I have to agree that 640x480 benches are totally USELESS.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Opteron 165 for 263$= FX-62 preformace. You can't make that claim.
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Core 2 Duo E6600 is FX-62 performance 100% Guranteed.

Opteron 165 = FX-62 performance? Not Guranteed.

Big difference.
 
I personally think this is one of the worse [H] reviews in a long time because it provides a magnified image of a product.

This article should of been called: "CPU scaling in high resolution gaming"
and NOT
Core Duo gaming

Why? For starters, the bottleneck is obviously the videocard when all the results are within 2-3 FPS because we all know that the CPUs listed there were not all the same speed. The only reason [H] did a review like this, was to go 'against' the current.
" Yay free publicity because we did something different than everyone else. When everyone is saying how a processor is great, we'll find a reason to say the opposite! "

That's like having a brand new car come out with 700 hp and all the media can talk about is how the paint is almost the same as the previous years.

Gaming with the core duo ? Yeah, it does it well, very well. For years Intel's been trashed because AMD was faster than it in games, and now that Intel is faster, [H] tries to downplay it and shows that 'hey look, in our videocard bound tests, they are close!'
The fact that Intel does NOT suck in games anymore is a big thing and should of been noted.

And gaming? Do you guys really game? Yeah... sure you do. I used to game 5-8 hours a day when I was younger and now I still do a 2-3 hours per day (yes its a lot). And you know what counts in FPS shooters, and most multiplayer games? It's getting the most possible FPS possible. And even with FPS caps, mouse responses are faster with faster machines, and minimum FPS are higher.
Yes, I game at 800x600 and also at 1024x1024 when I game, and I do this the most often.

Not to mention, when I buy a brand new CPU, I want it to be able to perform well in 6 months too. Newer games, 1 year down or so, will most likely use the CPU much more than today's games. If you're gaming... in 1-2 years, tell me honestly. Which CPU would you rather have?

The review should of shown what the CPU is capable of in terms of gaming.

Also, the level of bias made me laugh when you said: "a small o/c on the AMD cpu" will equal things out. Well let's look at this... The Fx-62 runs at 2.8 already and has a DIFFICULT time overclocking to 3.0-3.2. AMD is pushing themselves here.
Intel on the other side, is overclocking from 2.4 to 4.0 on air. (xtremesystems for tons of post on this) The Intel systems also scale much better with overclocks.

Getting back to the review, I AGREE that it was a valid point to make: That if you're planning to game at high resolutions with a single high end videocard, then it really doesnt matter what kind of processor you have for today's games, since none of them (except Oblivion) seem to push the CPUs enough and they will all be videocard bound.

However, this should of been a small section of the review, the rest of the review should of been on the actual CPU.

A good review, still based on gaming, would of shown:
- noise level of the stock CPU fans when gaming
- heat levels of the stock CPU fan while gaming
- scaling, what about people that dont want all the eye candy? Those people will play at 800x600, or 1024x768, etc. And they'll play games like Far Cry, Counter-Strike, Quake 4
- Quake 4... yeah, how exactly is it possible that in a gaming review based on a CPU, you omit the ONLY game that actually uses the 2 cores. Seriously ?

Did AMD buy [H] or something ?

Btw, I have 3 AMD machines in my house and no Intel machines.
 
WesM63 said:
Overall, I think Conroe is a better buy atm.
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I would certainly hope so. Let's put this in perspective. The FX-62 is basically exactly the same as the original Opteron but running @ 2.8 Ghz. In other words, a 3+ year old architecture is being bested by a new architecture. How shocking.
 
THIS IS A COMPLETELY INVALID CPU TEST. Why? Because the res is high. Why does futuremark push res down? why does everyone have low res when testing CPUs. This is a 7950GX2 benchmark, not a conroe benchmark. Have fun enjoying the small performance gap here AMD fans, but this benchmark isn't a CPU test, just a 7950GX2 test to see how well it runs with different CPUs. . I propose this be moved to the Graphics section
 
extremely nice 7900GTX review, too bad the CPU's were irrelevant in the review. C2D CRUSHES AMD... watch the ORB in the coming weeks, AMD will drop out of the top 100 in 3DMark 06!

C
 
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