Desktop CPUs: 1H' 2007
Summer dormancy in the IT industry. New products are coming only in autumn, so we can make up some interim conclusions for the year 2007 in the sphere of desktop CPU. Let's start with the high-end sector - no changes so far: only Intel is offering quad-core CPUs which provide a three-fold performance gain in optimized applications. But.. software like that is still a rarity and most applications still load only one CPU core.
Nevertheless, we can state that today dual-core CPUs appear to be the most balanced solution. First, they are already affordable: both Intel and AMD are offering models priced below $100. Secondly, Windows is a multitasking operating system: launch the Task manager and you will see 20-30 various processes which are run in the background. That means, if a game is running, all these processes will not slow it down (and if will, that is insignificant).
Intel offers the most powerful dual-core CPUs. These are various models based on the Conroe core with 4 MB L2 cache, with the system bus 266 MHz and 333 MHz (QPB: 1066 MHz and 1333 MHz, respectively).
Among the CPUs of mid-end pricing category are Conroe processors of 2 MB L2 cache and AMD's top-end processors. The low-end CPUs are Conroe-1M and the remaining AMD's processors. Besides, there is a value category for which Intel has introduced Celeron CPUs based on another modification of the Conroe core.
Celeron CPUs have always been phenomenal: their performance used to be very low (we can even say, there was no performance!), but they did sell solely because a PC can't operate without the CPU! In the end, the PC community quite rightfully called Celeron "a cap for the socket".
But currently Intel is using the Conroe-L core which appears to be a modified Conroe core. The modifications are as follows: the system bus speed has been minimized (200 MHz), so has the L2 cache (to 512 K). The reduction in the number of CPU cores from two to one is in our view an unimportant fact. While testing E2140 and E2160 (both based on Conroe-1M), we found that the reduction in FSB speed and reduction in L2 cache results in an insignificant drop of performance. If we continue reasoning in this way, we can expect quite a decent operating speed from new Celeron processors. To verify this assumption, we purchased the cheapest Celeron 420 running at 1.6 GHz priced $44.
On the reverse side, processors based on the Conroe-L core are easy to distinguish by the number and positioning of capacitors:
The CPU-Z displays the following information:
The utility reports 512 K of L2 cache and FSB=200 MHz (800 MHz QPB). We note that functionally the Conroe-L core is not superior to the elder brethren and supports all the extended instruction sets, starting with MMX up to SSSE3 and EM64T. The same can be said about support for C1E (Enhanced Halt State), Execute DisableBit, and ThermalMonitor 2 .
As regards the physical parameters of the core, the operating power supply voltage is within 1.225V to 1.325BV, the typical heat emission being 35W; the Conroe-L core is manufactured following the 65 nm process technology.
To make the tests be impartial, we purchased an AMD processor. In fact, since the moment of release of Conroe we shared unfairly with the products of this company because of the unattractive "price/performance" ratio. But now AMD has significantly pushed the prices down for both the single-core (at price, they equaled Intel Celeron) and dual-core CPUs. To find out how competitive modern processors are, we purchased one of the cheapest dual-core processors - Athlon X2 4200+. Its retail price is $90; it is as much as that for E2140 based on Conroe-1M.
The CPU-Z displays the following information:
We compare this processor versus the 1-year old model - the single-core 3500+ (currently, a CPU like that costs $50 and is a competitor to Celeron).
It is easy to see that the only difference is in the second core in the 4200+ model. Evidently, it's just this fact which allowed AMD to raise the performance index by 700 points.
Overclocking
The overclocking capability of Conroe-L has turned out to be not as impressive as it was in Conroe-1M, but nevertheless we attained 3 GHz without much efforts.
The overclocking of Athlon X2 4200+ proved disappointing - the maximum stable frequency was 2.75 GHz,
which fully meets the overclocking of 3500+ released a year ago.
This means only one thing: a complete lack of any progress in terms of technical advancement in AMD.
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