Intel Conroe Core Duo

Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
The NDA's lifted yesterday so if you haven't already seen the awsomeness that is Intel's new chip then you really haven't been paying enough attention. Review sites listed below (bonus points if you make it through all of them :)):

Tom's Hardware Guide
AnandTech
HEXUS
Hardware Secrets
OCAU
TweakTown
HotHardware
The Tech Report
Trusted Reviews
Legion Hardware
bit-tech
ExtremeTech
Legit Reviews
Sharky Extreme
HardOCP
PC Perspective
GotFrag Hardware
Gamepyre
X-bit Labs - Part 1
tbreak
neoseeker
Byte Sector

The bottom line ?

If you are going to buy a new processor for gaming in the next 3-12 months and its not an Intel then you are probably making a mistake. However it will be very interesting to see what AMD do with their prices - they certainly can't compete on power anymore.
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
woooooo nice nice nicey niceness, must admit to being AMD fan but ouch, and have i mentioned nice. Good work intel, i'd heared that there new attempt would be fairly awesome, but all i can say is
"Exsqueeze me a baking powder".
although can't wait to see what AMD do as a retaliation, whether it be reducing the price of their chips, or bringing out something that can only be described in a long list of unnecesary superlatives.
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
AMD's next major architecture is not expected until Q4 2007 (possibly Q1 2008) so you might be waiting a while for their response. The only thing they can do now is hope their quad cores look interesting and drop the price through the floor.
 
H

HotStuff

Member
Yeah, have been watching this conroe chip for a while now - it is awsome to say the least. I intend to get it early in August as long as ASUS bring out their motherboards to support the new chipset in time.
 
H

HotStuff

Member
There are two available but probs with them though:

P5W DH Deluxe: Bios doesn't support new conroe chip, you need older chip to flash bios or get new chip from Asus.

P5B Deluxe: Perfect! Got firewire connection, 800Mhz bus speed but not out yet.

P5B: OK, get no firewire connection but not out yet.

P5VD2: Only got 533Mhz memory speed. Is that a waste of time or what if buying conroe?!! Is out though.

In short, there are no Asus motherboards with chipsets that support the conroe chip to it's full potential. Though I do accept you can buy 2 at the moment.
 
DeZmond

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
*starts drooling*

Seriously though, I wonder what AMD can do against this chip other than cut prices - Intel have really done their homework on this one. Having said that, AMD64 tech is still pretty powerful and doesn't lag too much behind conroe, and you also get the nice fuzzy feeling you get when you support the underdog ;).
This is looking like a must-buy to be honest - eco friendly, powerful processing. What more could you want?
 
Pestcontrol

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
DeZmond said:
What more could you want?
Click to expand...
An AMD label on it. :)

Anyway, Conroe is 64 bit also, and it's probably 64 bit done right (unlike the previous P4's where it wasn't that much faster), haven't read all the reviews yet though.

AMD's elusive K8L is long overdue, their A64 core design has not significantly changed since 2003. You'd wonder what they have been doing all that time.

Otoh if K8L marks 4+ years worth of design improvements, it should damn well own Conroe all over the place. I got a feeling it's got some aces up it's sleeve AMD would rather not disclose, so as to not motivate Intel too much, what's known for now is that it'll share a lot of Conroe's features and possibly a novel Z-RAM based cache. Time will tell.
 
Tetsuo_Shima

Tetsuo_Shima

In Cryo Sleep
Pestcontrol said:
Otoh if K8L marks 4+ years worth of design improvements, it should damn well own Conroe all over the place. I got a feeling it's got some aces up it's sleeve AMD would rather not disclose, so as to not motivate Intel too much, what's known for now is that it'll share a lot of Conroe's features and possibly a novel Z-RAM based cache. Time will tell.
Click to expand...

There you go, you urge me to wait a couple of months for new chipsets and the new Intel processor that would (and evidently has) blown AMD out the water and now you mention the possibility of a new even more powerful than ever before™ AMD processor in the runnings.

My conclusion - It's always the right time to buy a new PC. If you keep holding back for the next biggest thing youll be here from July to Julember.
 
H

HotStuff

Member
now or 2 months ago wasn't a good time to buy a new PC or even upgrade. I think the best time to buy/upgrade is when Significantly better hardware comes out, not just better. Conroe is clearly a lot better, you can't go wrong if you get this.

Financially though it is expensive to buy new kit, so as has been said that significantly better new kit means 'normal' kit has to come down in price, ie AMD's chips.

Power or money....eveyone's choice?
 
DeZmond

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
Indeed. I'm hoping this forces the prices for Socket 939 AMD chips to rock-bottom prices - I'm looking for a new system and getting an entry level 939 system is a great upgrade path since I'll be able to upgrade from a 3000 or 3200+ to a dual core 4600+ or similar a year down the line for a snip in cost. A decent 939 mobo now will mean I could theoretically use SLI, too - so a cheap system bought now-ish will be able to be upgraded to something a lot more powerful at next to nothing. Well, that's the plan. At my new salary of 12k basic per year (minus tax and travel expenses) I should be able to make an entirely new system for £350 or so.

A favoured supplier (local):
http://www.e-woc.co.uk
 
Pestcontrol

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
Tetsuo_Shima said:
There you go, you urge me to wait a couple of months for new chipsets and the new Intel processor that would (and evidently has) blown AMD out the water and now you mention the possibility of a new even more powerful than ever before™ AMD processor in the runnings.

My conclusion - It's always the right time to buy a new PC. If you keep holding back for the next biggest thing youll be here from July to Julember.
Click to expand...

Not quite true. K8L is still some 18 months away, that's a lot more than a couple of months. Besides, any indications of it's performance are 100% speculation, whereas the first serious Conroe benchmarks leaked out many months ago.

Most of the time it doesn't matter so much when you buy, but sometimes, especially when something groundbreaking is about to be released with no answer from the competition in sight for quite some time (Athlon 64, Conroe), waiting can be rewarding.
 
H

HotStuff

Member
The release date of the full retail release of the conroe chip I want appears to have been delayed :( Was looking forward to upgrading PC before returning to work.
 
T

[THN]Buffalo_Hunter

In Cryo Sleep
Well, the deed is done....ordered my new rig today - Core 2 Duo E6600, GA-965P-DQ6, pair of 160GB SATA-II drives, 2GB Corsair DDR2-6400. Can't wait to put it together.
 
E

elDiablo

Guest
So tempted to give you negative rep, because I hate you so much :(
 
SgtFury

SgtFury

Junior Administrator
Staff member
You and your fancy toys Buffalo... Wait asec what was your old rig and how much for it :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top