Core 2: The Empire Strikes Back

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve probably heard rumors that intel was getting really excited about their new “Conroe” (now officially called Core 2) line of processors.  If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably also known that, on the desktop CPU side, AMD has in general been kicking intel’s butt on the top end CPUs for more than a year and a half.  Intel’s fastest Extreme Editions couldn’t compete with AMD’s FX line, even when overclocked by huge amounts.  So sure, intel may be excited, but what are the odds of them making up the ~30% performance hole they were in, much less gaining a lead on the brand new smokin’ fast AMD FX-62?

So intel sent us some sample Conroe processors a while ago. We tested the heck out of them.

Core 2 is just unbelievable.  Speed leaps like this just don’t happen much in our industry.  Intel’s flagship CPU has gone from 30% behind AMD to 30% ahead in one product.  That just doesn’t happen.

And what makes it even more impressive is that intel has achieved this speed while cutting the heat generated by the CPU subsystem roughly in half.  This also just doesn’t happen, but I’ll get to that later.

Normally I don’t print any of our own benchmark data.  I’d prefer to point to 3rd party magazine and website reviews to give you more impartial scores.  But in this case, here’s some #’s I ran myself so you get some idea of what I’m excited about.  Now that AMD has moved to DDR2 with their new socket AM2 design, I was literally able to use the exact same memory and SLI graphics card setups for both of these runs.  Both CPUs are overclocked to as far as they can go stably, so you can see just what each chip can do.

Of course, PC Mark is just one test.  Never rely on only one benchmark, and I encourage you to check out some 3rd party reviews of Core 2 vs. FX.  Here's one of the first. But this is the kind of % gain most of the CPU-intensive benchmarks are seeing.  Honestly, in many games you won’t see this much of an improvement though.  Why?  Because with this kind of CPU power the games become GPU limited.  That means with the fastest Core 2’s, the CPU is literally no longer holding the game back at all- the graphics cards are what can’t keep up!  There’s always a bottleneck somewhere that prevents you from getting infinite benchmark scores, but with Quad SLI and a Core 2 Extreme setup, you’ll most likely notice your hard drives being the slowest thing in your system.  Core processors are just stupid fast, and I will be the first to admit I never expected this big a comeback from Intel.  Never write-off the Empire…

But WHY is Core 2 so fast?

Once you’ve seen how fast Core 2 Extreme is, you’ll be asking “But why is it so fast?”  At least that’s the question us geeks were asking around Falcon.  The obvious answer is, of course, that intel has entered into a pact with Satan whereby they will achieve phenomenal CPU speed increases in exchange for eternal damnation of the souls of every employee at the company along with their first-born children.  But intel has excellent lawyers that may be able to get them out of that pact, so I see no reason why you should feel bad in making their loss your gain by picking up one of these fine CPUs.

For those who may prefer a more technical explanation of why Conroe is so fast (but not so technical that your eyes glaze over) I asked Ben Shamansky, an Intel Field Applications Engineer.  It’s Ben’s job to make sure I know what I’m talking about when it comes to intel products (not an easy task Ben but I thank you for it!).  Intel has a lot of Core 2 marketing terms for its features that need explaining to make much sense.  Here’s what Ben had to say about the features that make Core so fast…

“Wide Dynamic Execution” (also known as micro-ops fusion)

This is the fusing of several separate instructions into a single big instruction that can be run in one CPU clock cycle. Essentially doing several things at once.  Ben’s take: “Pentium was able to fuse 3 instructions…just like AMD.  Now Core 2 can fuse 4 instructions and run them in one clock.  In short, we can do 4 things at once, AMD can do 3 things at once. This is done in EACH core separately… so AMD dual core can do 6 instructions per clock.  We can do 8 instructions per clock in a dual core chip.”

“Advanced Smart Cache”

Ben has a smart explanation: “This is the advantage you get by having one large cache that feeds both cores.  I like to think of the Pentium D and the AMD architecture as being sort of “1st generation dual core”.  That is, we simply take two single core processors and stick them together in one package, play with the FSB… and tada – you have a dual core part.  Easy to manufacture and cheap.  We can make a lot of them, AMD can make a lot of them.  The problem with this architecture is that each core has its own separate and independent cache, and the cores need to ALWAYS know what is in the other core’s cache.  This takes communication (on the Front Side Bus or HyperTransport bus) and it takes compute cycles.  Gen 1 dual core is only about 60% faster than single core for this reason- because the cores are busy watching what the other core is doing a lot of the time.  Enter Core 2 – which I like to call “generation 2 dual core”.  Now you have one big huge cache which is feeding both cores. NOW you set your cores free to both run at 100% and not have any of the communication overhead of always having to know what the other core is doing.  Now you get a real 2x performance gain over single core.  Cool.”

“Smart Memory Access”

This is a marketing term for getting the CPU, Front Side Bus and memory controller all working together to optimize accessing memory.  According to Ben, “Some cool things are done here like ‘predictive’ memory fetching.  The CPU will work with the advanced memory controller to ‘guess’ what memory the CPU will need next – and load it into cache for ultra fast access. It is a good thing – and one quite honestly that will be hard for the rest of the world to catch up with us.  You can measure this by the number of “cache misses” that AMD gets compared to Intel.  A cache miss is when the CPU needs memory and can’t find it in cache and needs to go out to main memory (a slow process) to get it.”

“Intelligent Power Capability” – Laptop chip power saving technology in a desktop chip.

Or as Ben says it, “Intelligent Power Capability is our marketing term for the fact that Core is so damn cool and uses so little power.”  This is, in my opinion, Core 2’s other great feat (aside from its speed).   One that deserves its own section.

Why I think Core 2 is good for the PC industry

As you can probably tell, I’m quite excited by Core 2’s speed gains.  A 30% leap is huge.  But why I’m really excited about Core 2 is that it cuts the heat generated by the CPU sub-system roughly in half.  Most Core 2 processors are spec’d to use a maximum of 65 Watts (Core 2 Extreme is 75W).  By contrast, most AMD processors are spec’d to use 89 Watts, with FX-62s spec’d at 125.  Intel’s older Pentium D chips were the hottest at 130 Watts (for the 820 and 840).  AMD used to be the cooler running CPUs.  Now Core 2 makes all other desktop processors look wrecklessly inefficient.

Intel has thrown down a gauntlet that I hope the rest of the PC component industry will pick up: you CAN go faster AND cut down power AND cut down heat generation all at the same time.  Graphics card makers: you’re now the hottest component in the system.  Hopefully you’ll follow Core 2’s lead.

Why would this be good for the industry? Heat is a PC’s enemy.  The hotter components get, the harder it is for us as a system builder to manage it.  And the trend we’ve been seeing from component makers in the last few years is disturbing.  It’s the “as long as the heat gets off my part I’ve done my job” syndrome.  So we now have very hot CPUs, GPUs, memory, V-Regs, NorthBridge chipsets – even SouthBridge chipsets are getting hot – and all are venting their heat out into the box onto one another.  As the system builder, we’ve got to get all that exhaust heat out of the box before it causes problems.

Back in the dark ages, when PCs were made from wood and twigs, we didn’t need cooling fans.  These days some of our systems have ten, and liquid cooling for the CPUs is starting to become a lot more common.  It’s tough to keep PCs cool and quiet and blazingly fast at the same time.

The Core 2 processor itself doesn’t just take less power, the entire subsystem around it now consumes less power, and therefore bleeds off less heat.  In practical terms, that means you can hold your fingers on the voltage regulators of an intel 975XBX motherboard while benchmarking a Core 2 Extreme at maximum overclock with maximum voltage!  They’re warm, but that’s about it.  On an overclocked Athlon FX or Pentium D this would burn your finger!  And at stock speed and voltage, you’d barely know the V-Regs were working.  The whole area around the CPU is just amazingly cool.

Why I think there’s never been a better time to buy a new PC.

Okay here’s my totally self-serving wrap-up, but hear me out.  One thing our clients are always very afraid of is buying something that’s only the fastest the day they take it out of the box.  Our industry has a relentless pace, and that’s half the fun.  We all love the newer, faster toys, but there’s always a newer, faster toy even after you’ve bought yours.  The part we have for sale today is the one we wanted yesterday that doesn’t look as interesting as the one that’s out tomorrow.  Or as I often joke “For my customers if it’s actually shipping, it’s too old.”

But I think the launch of Core 2 is the start of a “reasonably safe” window of time to buy a PC without having it get stomped by a new beast tomorrow.  I say that because the usually relentless pace of major new announcements seems to be taking a breather in preparation for Windows Vista next year.  Bill Gates recently stated publicly he thinks there’s an “80% chance” Vista will ship in January.  Most of the next big hardware steps are being held off until closer to Vista’s shipping.  Of course, enthusiasts want their PC overbuilt to handle Vista now.  And for a very rare period, I think there’s a good chance the PC you buy today won’t be outclassed in a month.  Of course, this is the PC industry. Your mileage may vary.