The Penryn Preview - Part I: Wolfdale Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 21, 2007 12:35 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Wolfdale vs. Conroe Performance
We had heard rumors of Intel introducing a faster, lower latency L2 cache in Wolfdale and it appears to be true:
| CPU | ScienceMark L2 Latency (64-byte stride) |
CPU-Z 1.40 (8192KB, 128-byte stride) | CPU-Z 1.40 (8192KB, 64-byte stride) |
| Conroe - 2.33GHz | 13 cycles | 66.87 ns | 15 ns |
| Wolfdale - 2.33GHz | 12 cycles | 48.86 ns | 9.43 ns |
Not only is Wolfdale's L2 cache larger, but it also happens to be slightly faster than its predecessor. Intel has shaved off a single clock cycle from Wolfdale's L2 access time; we're already off to a good start.
If you want a quick glance at what Wolfdale will offer, the chart below will give you just that. We've taken some of our normal CPU benchmarks and ran them on a 2.33GHz Conroe as well as our 2.33GHz Wolfdale, the chart below illustrates percent performance improvement of Wolfdale over Conroe at the same clock speed:
Let's point out the zeros first: SYSMark, iTunes and Oblivion all showed no performance increase from Conroe to Wolfdale. Not all applications will benefit dramatically from the improved cache or architectural improvements and these are examples of some.
The DivX 6.6 test shows a particularly impressive 10.5% increase in performance, especially when you keep in mind that we are running the same DivX test we always run and not an SSE4 optimized benchmark. If you'll remember back to our Intel-sanctioned Penryn preview, with SSE4 enabled Penryn's DivX performance skyrocketed. But this test here shows us that even without SSE4 optimizations, Wolfdale is a healthy 10% faster than Conroe. Windows Media Encoder 9 saw a 5.4% increase in performance, which is still tangible.
Wolfdale also seems to do quite well in 3D rendering apps, giving us 6.7% better performance in 3dsmax 9 and a similar boost in Lightwave. Cinebench performance improved even further at 9.1%.
Gaming performance is a bit of a mixed bag; we saw everything from Oblivion's 0.4% performance improvement to 8.5% under Lost Planet. Wolfdale is good for gaming, but the degree is very title dependent.
On average, Wolfdale ends up being just under 5% faster clock-for-clock than Conroe. Definitely not an earth shattering improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. Focusing in on specific benchmarks, Wolfdale can look even more impressive. Without taking SSE4 performance into account as we don't know how widespread SSE4 applications will be upon its arrival, Wolfdale will simply make competing more difficult for AMD's Phenom, but not impossible.
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Sunrise089 - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
agree w/ 1+2vailr - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
How long will the socket 775 (for desktop machines) be around?Has Intel given a timeline forecast for replacing 775 with some other CPU socket? Any idea whether current P35 boards will support the 32 nm. Gesher CPU (assuming those will still be socket 775 form factor)?
zsdersw - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
Socket 775 will likely disappear with the introduction of Nehalem, so no.. P35 boards will almost certainly *not* support Gesher.RamarC - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
it's too bad that an upgrade now probably won't be able to handle anything beyond penryn. still a 3ghz quad core for $300 is fantastic considering that i've got 3.4ghz dual core space heater now.zsdersw - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
Well, I mean, seriously.. socket 775 has been around for a long time. The same people who complain about having to buy a different motherboard are probably the same people who would complain that they aren't getting any new features if motherboards didn't have to be changed as often. It makes no sense, but then again, that's never stopped anyone from complaining.. to be sure.I'm not saying you're one of those people, though.
vailr - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
Also, the TigerDirect.com price you have listed of $569.99 for the "Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor" is off.It's at $289.99 here:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...chtools/...
kleinwl - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
Why did you not post the benches for the OC of 3.22? or better yet, jack up the voltage to get a 3.33 and benchmark that? Then we could figure what the EXTREME EDITION cpu is going to do.Roy2001 - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
I guess Intel does not allow him to do that.retrospooty - Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - link
Thats a good point. To release benchies at this time must have intel's OK to do so. I am sure if they let him, he would have published. And here we are all complaining LOL .gigahertz20 - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
What a tease, Anand didn't even raise the CPU core voltage. I figured you would change the CPU core voltage to see how far you could overclock this beast, right after you found 3.22GHz was your max overclock at stock voltage. I want to know how far you can push this. No soup for you!