Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on June 6, 2006 7:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words: Conroe Availability and Pricing
While Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors will be released at the beginning of Q3 of this year it will take some time for all of Intel's shipments to be Conroe based. The scary statistic is that by the end of this year, only 25% of Intel's Performance Mainstream desktop processor shipments will be based on Conroe. The remaining 75% will still be NetBurst based, meaning they will be Pentium 4, Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition.
Given how competitive Core 2 Extreme is with the Athlon 64 FX-62, you would expect no one to want to purchase a NetBurst based processor if they can get a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme for a competitive price. Intel does have a plan to deal with the over availability of undesirable Pentium Ds and limited supply of Conroes; Intel would do what anyone would do if you're trying to move a lot of undesirable product: cut the price.
By the time Conroe ships, Intel's Conroe and Pentium D pricing will be as follows:
| CPU | Price |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4M) | $999 |
| Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (3.73GHz/2Mx2) | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz/4M) | $530 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4M) | $316 |
| Intel Pentium D 960 (3.60GHz/2Mx2) | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2M) | $224 |
| Intel Pentium D 950 (3.40GHz/2Mx2) | $224 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2M) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 940 (3.20GHz/2Mx2) | $183 |
| Intel Pentium D 930 (3.00GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 920 (2.80GHz/2Mx2) | $178 |
| Intel Pentium D 820 (2.80GHz/1Mx2) | $133 |
| Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66GHz/1Mx2) | $93 |
While the Pentium D has never been as attractive as AMD's Athlon 64 X2, at these prices some of them may be difficult to resist. The $93 Pentium D 805 will be particularly hard to ignore, when was the last time you could build a solid two processor workstation for a few hundred dollars?
The Pentium D 805 aside, the rest of the Pentium D line becomes extremely attractive after these price cuts take place, especially when you consider that AMD's cheapest dual core offering is still hovering around the $300 mark.
Intel's price cuts are very aggressive, to the point that they are the talk of the town in Taiwan. Every single motherboard manufacturer we met with asked us about Intel's price cuts and, more importantly, how AMD would respond. We've been told that AMD will respond with a series of price cuts of its own, the questions when and how much remain unanswered. Next week, in Taipei, AMD will be speaking with many motherboard manufacturers about its response to Intel's threat.
Despite the lower pricing on the Pentium Ds, it's not like Conroe ends up being all that expensive. The entry level E6300 and E6400 chips are both priced at $183 and $224, respectively, which is far from high. As attractive as the Pentium D's pricing may be, Conroe's performance and lower power consumption may still end up driving more demand than there is supply.
For the Dells of the world, Conroe availability shouldn't be too much of an issue because companies like Dell get first dibs. For years of not going with AMD, all while demanding something more competitive from Intel, you better believe that Dell is going to soak up every last Conroe that it can.
The problem then becomes what happens after Dell and HP have eaten their lunch, unfortunately the concern is that aggressive pricing won't be enough to reduce retail demand for Conroe. What we're worried about happening is a very small supply of Conroes on the retail market in late Q3/early Q4, resulting in much higher street prices than what you see in the table above. In the worst case scenario for Intel, Conroe's limited retail availability could result in a price to performance ratio equal to or worse than AMD's Athlon 64 X2.
The benchmarks we've seen show Conroe as a very strong competitor to the Athlon 64 X2, availability could be what limits how much lost ground Intel can regain before AMD has a chance to respond with K8L.
While performance here is extremely strong, we also haven't even touched on the overclockability of Conroe; from what we've seen, hitting above 3.5GHz on the highest end parts isn't too far fetched on air cooling alone. The absolute highest we've seen on air is 3.8GHz from a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. By the time Conroe officially launches, we'll be able to provide a full set of performance tests but so far we're seeing even more data to support the idea that Intel really has a winner on its hands.
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thestain - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Be nice to see the benchmarks with the settings at default, 2X and 4X default to see if the settings requiring more work from cpu and greater memory use will change the results any.Thoughts?
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Err, I DO hope for AMD a 2x core part would beat Intel's platform which would cost 1/4 of the cost wouldn't you??
And then only in multi-threading. If you want to argue about MT, then Pentium D 805 is the absolute leader over AMD's here.
peternelson - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Only if price is a major consideration.In a highend system you will be paying say $795 for a myrinet lan card, lots for an areca 1260 8 port sata, more for your TWO high end video cards.
The processor(s) then become a smaller proportion of the total system cost, so the price differential between 805 and FX62 becomes less important.
Plus the 805 doesn't support hardware virtualisation so is not a good choice.
mpeavid - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Uhm - cost is a cost.If one product cost significantly more, it is duely noted.
Cost is still the PRIME factor in any enterprise endeavor. Business to make money.
neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The two are comparable at limiting the max available I/O's on each cpu, thus both would be almost identical in comparison and AMD still would not have any lead in this area since both are similar here. Take a look at the communication bench to see for yourself on that.
Just curious, where did you see Intel not having any performance headroom and where is it show AMD I/O scaling better? I guess your an AMD fan? At a glance one observation I took in was how AMD and the rest say how AM2 has a faster resolution to their current AM2 fastest lineup, saying how AM2 has a faster cpu in the works and it will eventually outperform conroe.
Based on that argument I seen on many sites, it is my opinion that no multi billion dollar industry has a 1-man marketing team that would put together a product not worthy of such big changes knowing the community of people they are selling to are educated more on researching and buying the best performance bang for their buck. Knowing this they surely wouldn't have released AM2 currently as is if they had already a faster version capable of competing with its rival Intels top performing release.
If AMD is struggling this bad on a new core blah blah blah, then wouldn't you think in terms of processor technology and advancement that they couldn't possibly turn out 5+ years of research in a single year to outperform conroe. I know conroe is been in the works for a really long time now and all im saying is if AM2 was so bad and only gave a 2-4% increase in performance over its 939 top counterpart then why release at all? Just hold off and wait till you have something that can actually perform closer to its rival Intel. Yeah I know its been a war back and forth for years but in the past till now you can assume how bad AMD must be with Intels conroe on top with so much headroom.
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Because you and I, the enthusiast, don't make AMD nor Intel any money. It's the J6P's that buy all of this stuff and keep those guys in business. AMD needed to transition to DDR2 and they did it now vs later. Why didn't Intel wait till Conroe to transition to DDR2 and 65nm when they knew they had a winner?neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I understand that. Mainly Intel can take advantage of DDR2 on its core design early on and stretch new technology while keeping a clear indication on their doorstep that they had conroe to push them ahead and keep sales and the people happy.
AMD didn't have anything more advanced then its FX60 939 to shove in the mainstream with AM2 only being what 2-4% faster, in this sense its only fair to question my original thought, would AMD be better to not launch AM2 for the sake of keeping face with the people and having it look like they need to get something that can beat this new conroe; furthermore, then releasing a small gain that appears to be a flop and having people say no to future AMD.
For this purpose I think it would of been wise decision by AMD to let this conroe come out and have a winning solution launched to beat it or compete with it when the time was right, rather then launching a marketing flop and causing people like us to lean towards the opposition and loss of trust towards AMD. =)
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I think AMD performed as they should've by getting off the DDR bus and letting DDR2 fully take the market. K8L won't be here till next year and I'm sure the memory manufacturers would like to phase out DDR. Especially since we ALL knew AM2 wasn't going to be any more of a performer than 939.Gary Key - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
The last volume orders for DDR have been sent to the FABs already, DDR production at the FAB side will be less than 10% by the end of Q3.neweggster - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I agree in some ways. I never said that it was a something bad in context here but that AMD should of waited till they had something to show for.
And DDR2 is not fully taken the market yet, not for a long time by any standards. DDR still remains top sales and DDR2 isn't going to really start seeing numbers matching DDR sales for another 1-2 years because all the major sales are exclusively business, schools, and computers bought on a basis by people to do small tasks where many P4's and regular AMD based machines are still the biggest sales for DDR, and DDR2 being more expensive to build with while keeping the cost down, granted sales are on a decline since the induction of AM2.
From my other statement it reflects that no matter what AMD has done, rather waiting or releasing AM2 like they did, it does not open DDR2 sales that much yet. If you think about it DDR2 sales are still in my estimate a 80% or more Intel sale, because AM2 is proven to be something that enthusiast would rather not go to till it matures more. And then all the major retailers will not promote AM2 so hard to sell just because of the baring they have seen, its not yet cost effective for them. So by this it would make no difference on DDR2 making it more mainstream.
The move to DDR2 is still very slow and will be so for a time. Trust me on that.