“The architecture is called Core, processor family is Core 2, the product names are Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme. In the past we’ve talked about its architecture and even previewed its performance, but today is the real deal. We’ve all been waiting for this day, the day Intel lifts the last remaining curtain on the chip that is designed to re-take the performance crown from AMD, to return Intel to its days of glory,” Anand Lal Shimpi reports for AnandTech.
“What you see before you is not the power hungry, poor performing, non-competitive garbage (sorry guys, it’s the truth) that Intel has been shoving down our throats for the greater part of the past 5 years. No, you’re instead looking at the most impressive piece of silicon the world has ever seen, at the fastest desktop processor we’ve ever tested. What you’re looking at is Conroe and today is its birthday,” Lal Shimpi reports.
“Intel’s new Core 2 lineup has basically made all previous Intel processors worthless. The performance of the new Core 2 CPUs is so much greater, with much lower power consumption, that owners of NetBurst based processors may want to dust off the old drill bits and make some neat looking keychains,” Lal Shimpi reports.
Lal Shimpi reports, “AMD won’t have an architectural update of the Athlon 64 X2 until sometime in 2007 or 2008, thus its only response to Intel’s Core 2 lineup today is to also reduce pricing.”
“Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800 didn’t lose a single benchmark in our comparison; not a single one. In many cases, the $183 Core 2 Duo E6300 actually outperformed Intel’s previous champ: the Pentium Extreme Edition 965. In one day, Intel has made its entire Pentium D lineup of processors obsolete,” Lal Shimpi reports. “Compared to AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 the situation gets a lot more competitive, but AMD still doesn’t stand a chance. The Core 2 Extreme X6800, Core 2 Duo E6700 and E6600 were pretty consistently in the top 3 or 4 spots in each benchmark, with the E6600 offering better performance than AMD’s FX-62 flagship in the vast majority of benchmarks.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Is anyone still questioning whether Apple picked the right horse?
Related articles:
RUMOR: Intel’s Woodcrest to power Apple’s next-gen high-performance Mac Pro desktops – July 11, 2006
Intel aims for 32 cores by 2010 – July 10, 2006
PC Mag: ‘Top Ten’ list of things to know about Intel’s new Core 2 Duo processors – July 07, 2006
RUMOR: Apple to unveil ‘Mac Pro’ with new enclosure design, Intel Core 2 Duo at WWDC next month – July 03, 2006
Report: Dell signs deal with AMD for millions of chips for full range of desktops, notebooks – June 26, 2006
Independent benchmarks: Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe) 2.67 GHz – June 22, 2006
Apple chose well: Intel poised to take massive lead across the board over AMD – June 07, 2006
The X86 is still garbage. 8 general purpose registers vs PPC’s 32 general registers.
The PPC has A LOT more potential, if IBM ever decides to take it below 65nm.
Intel just doesn’t have the wow factor. Mac’s aren’t special anymore, just generic PC boxes. They run a different OS whoopee…
I want a different OS and a different engine from the rest of the beige box makers; with Intel or AMD you dont get that
IBM has better technology then Intel. Period. Apple is just cheap. Hence quality goes down the toilet w/ Intel.
i want to know if the Core 2 Duo will fit into my iMac Core Duo slot. THAT would make me very excited!
Steve learned his lesson at NeXT, where he changed to NextStep on Intel — the precursor to OS X on Intel — towards the end of NeXT’s existence (the sale to Apple). I know because I had one of those NextStep Intel boxes. So it was natural that Apple ran an Intel version of OS X throughout the latters’ existence.
As far as the new Intel core 2 architecture, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. According to some of my reading, Intel is shamelessly copying Sun’s Niagra architecture for effectively utilizing large numbers of cores. It will take years for AMD to catch them. BTW, my Linux box — about a year old — has an AMD-64 bit processor, so I base my judgement on reality, not fanboy fanaticism. And Apple, with products like Xgrid, is certainly most likely to exploit the Intel multi core architecture to the maximum.
I have also seen hints of Intel creating processors with not all cores being the same. Hmmmm, Altivec on Intel, perhaps? Intel management has made comments about incorporating some Apple ideas in their processors in about two years. Interesting, eh?
Yes, Apple made the right choice.
Whatever happened to that motorola G5 that had awesome computing power but kept blowing up? Even though its now a moot point, I’d like to know the story behind this and how good the chip actually was.
– Mark
Follower – you beat me to it, but here is another sotry on the same yield issue for the cell processor:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/07/13/ibm_sony_cell_yield_revelation/
CPU yields are 10-20 per cent – That means for every wafer 80% of the chips are defective (I’m sure this will improve with time, but this is the current state).
Quote from article:
“At 20 per cent yield, that’s 64 Cells per wafer, so Sony needs 93,7500 wafers to in 4.5 month to get enough Cells. That’s 20,833 wafer starts per month, which isn’t entirely out of order, given not only IBM but Sony will be producing Cells destined for PS3s.”
Basically they *can* pull it off, but it’s going to rise the cost of the chips as well because of the low yield rate per wafer.
P.S. Don’t blame me for the grammar in the quote – it’s c&p’ed
“I’m sure Intel pursued Apple so hard because Intel needed Apple’s technology to create fast, low-power chips,”
“Intel is benefiting from Apple’s processor technology”
Yep, back off whatever you’re smoking. Intel had these processors designed long before talking to Apple, Apple finally worked out who was the better processor vendor and changed.
Why would Intel pursue Apple? Close out another architecture in the marketplace and sell more chips. They don’t need other reasons and there was certinaly nothing left to learn from the PowerPC.
“Lucky for us, Steve Jobs had the foresight to keep the Intel version of OS X as an ace up the sleeve for the last 6 years.”
Unfortunately Jobs was a bit behind the curve waiting so long to switch, it was clear that the PowerPC was a dead duck for many years, and Steve just kept telling people it was as fast, and more surprisingly the Apple faithful kept believing him.
Most businesses wish they had customers as gullible, oops, I mean loyal as Apple’s.