Intel Conroe is the desktop model of Intel’s next generation processor architecture that will be known as Intel Core. During IDF last month Intel displayed Conroe in public and the benchmarks that was performed was the least to say impressive and promising. Then Intel supplied the systems and we still have a few months to go before the architecture will be launched in July. Now it seems like Intel’s decision to display the processor this early might’ve resulted in unexpected consequences, several processors seems to have leaked from persons that has hardly signed any NDAs as new Conroe benchmarks has surfaced, while even a Conroe processor has been sold at eBay.
First of all it is a user called VictorWang at XtremeSystems that has posted some benchmarks with a 2.4GHz Intel Conroe processor, that is simply astonishing. He has used the Conroe processor with a rather simple test system, simply because there isn’t any motherboards supporting the processor, but especially the SuperPi 1M result is just too good to be true. It took 21.545 sek to complete a SuperPi 1m test, which can be compared to the world record for AMD processors, an Athlon 64 FX-57 at 4054MHz did the same test at 20.844 sek. In other words the Conroe processor was about 1 second slower, but that at stock speed paired with mediocre hardware! The reason for this extreme result is most likely Conroe’s shared L2 cache that makes it possible for one of the cores (superPi only support single-core) to use the whole 4MB L2 cache and big L2 cache is very important with SuperPi.
You can’t overclock the Conroe processor as they simply haven’t found a motherboard allowing it, but VictorWang is working on finding tests where the L2 cache doesn’t matter as much.
Except for VictorWang’s benchmarks it turns out that the first Conroe processor has now been sold, an engineering sample at 1.83GHz that was sold for $600 at eBay, the store price is expected to be about $205 when it arrives.
:: Follow VictorWang’s performance tests with his 2.4GHz Conroe processor
:: Visit the eBay auction
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