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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poohbear - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
so from a gamers perspective, and im guessing gamers are the only ones that care for the bleeding edge, does this cpu do anything for performance in games @ 1280x1024+ resolutions?Gary Key - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Yes, our tests were run at a lower resolution to keep the GPU from being a "bottleneck" to a certain degree. The performance differences in a couple games at 1600x1200 were slightly better for Conroe than at the 1024x768 setting. We did not have enough time with the 965 board to complete our test suite, but that will be coming in the near future. :-)
vailr - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Any rumors of when Apple's Conroe based Intel Mac will be released?That is: the full-fledged, 64 bit, desktop Mac (replacement for the dual-CPU G5 machine).
saratoga - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Though "full-fledged, 64 bit" will have to wait a little while until Apple launches a new MacOS version that has 64 bit support. Not that it really matters right now anyway, since 4GB is still enough for most users, and they should be ready in time for these people.saratoga - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Probably about the same time as Conroe launches. Apple is unlikely to sit around while Dell tempts their customers with fast, lower power CPUs. I imagine Apple will probably treat CPUs like they do GPUs. That is, when something substantially better comes out, they'll time it to launch a new tower/laptop/whatever so they don't get caught selling older hardware.flurazepam - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Server lost my last post! Hope it doesn't come up twice! Reiterating what I previously wrote. I'm currently in Taipei and have had the chance to test both the X6800 and the FX-62. Neither "feel" faster than either in normal use, but both "feel" significantly faster than the Pentium DEE. Using low resolution gaming, Conroe runs about 20% faster than the AMD, give or take a few percent. The chap at Intel also said that the Intel chip is not faster in every game or app. There a few apps that AMD can take over Intel. What needs to be done is testing using multithreaded apps run in a multiapp environment. In any case, Intel has a winner here.JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Quake 4 has SMP support, and it was enabled. SysMark2004 also does some multitasking. Getting a proper multitasking test configured and run takes quite a bit more time, unfortunately, so when given the choice of testing 6-8 applications vs. one multitasking setup, we have to currently settle for the former. In a few more months, we'll of course do our best to provide comprehensive testing. "One night in Bangkok..." er... Taiwan is not the best for getting every ounce of information we would like. :)flurazepam - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Apologies if this post comes up twicethestain - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
LOL.. Just want to see more test.. Anand and the gang.. I wish I was there!! Please no offense on my posts.. just trying to stir the humor pot a little..But.. is there some real world application that would put Conroe's FSB memory limit to the test and where AM2 would then perform better, because if not.. it is going to be a cold, dark summer and fall for AMD.
bob661 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
AM2 was NEVER meant to be a performance boost so to expect anything more is idiotic! Of course, Conroe would outperform AM2 as it is a new design with new improvements. AM2 is just DDR2 on the present tech. Considering that Conroe is all new tech, I expected even GREATER performance from the new platform. Either way, we now have a fair amount of choices when it comes to CPU's. I can now recommend Intel processors to my cusatomers (well I can recommend them next year when prices go down and there are more mid and low end Conroe's available).