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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saratoga - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Seriously. Whats with all the noobs in here who can't read a benchmark?toyota - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
whats the big deal? we just want to see what some realistic benchmarks look like in addition to the cpu specific ones.smitty3268 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
What you want is a gpu benchmark. What's the big deal? This is an article about cpus. If you want a gpu benchmark, go to another article because this one isn't for you.It's no different than if I were to come in and start complaining about how this article didn't test the performance of external usb hard drives. Sure, this article doesn't have anything to do with that, but I actually have a usb hdd and I don't have a Conroe, so it would be useful to me. Who cares about these stupid cpu tests, I want my usb hdd test!!!
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
But the result will be as expected, there will be no difference thanks for CPU limitations are high resolutions.
zsdersw - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
If the clock speeds of Core 2 Duo at launch are all there is to ever be, maybe.. but that's probably about as likely as the US government paying off its debts and balancing the budget.
Miggle - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I can't believe that most loggers here just does not understand the concept of isolation in tests. We are testing CPU speed here and as much as possible, we want to keep the GPU from affecting the results. Sure the difference would be smaller once we apply AA/AF but thats not because the X2 starts running faster but because the GPU is beginning to limit the fps. 20% is a huge difference for CPUs in the same price range... AMD may have FX64 by the time core2 is released but its not going to chop down that 20% performance lead down to 15% even. I'm an AMD fan but I got to hand the crown to intel for Core2. I'm particularly looking at the $183 core2.... should be faster than the X2 3800+ and cooler tooclassy - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
I don't think you understand. Years ago the cpu was the most important part of the system. That is far from the truth today. Truth is people play games with AA/AF and people do things at higher resolutions. That is just a fact of life. If you want to run pure cpu tests then run things at 640x480 then. That will show some facts, but escape the truth. Truth is the cpu is limited by the rest of the system components and who in the hell would pay $1000 for a cpu and put it in a system with to play games with no aa/af or run the desktop at 640x480. I think you fit in with that group of loggers you mentioned.coldpower27 - Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - link
Then let's GPU limit the FX 62 and Pentium EE 965 and bench them together and show there is no difference between them at high resolutions like 1920x1200. :D
This argument works in Intel's favour as well you know.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
Except the gamers like my friend where he plays somewhat competitively and complains that he gets lag spikes playing DoD: Source with Pentium M 2.0GHz laptop(a Dell XPS M170) with Geforce 7800GTX Go, at 1024x768 resolution. He also runs at 1024x768 for BF2 because of the same reason, and he still notices lag.
There's another guy which notices lag with A64 3000+ Radeon 9800 running Counter-Strike based on the FIRST HL engine.
The ones who play competitively wouldn't notice. But the "normal" people will also notice no difference running the same system with Sempron or Celeron D.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - link
The ones who doesn't play competitively wouldn't notice.