If only they had a time machine...

UPDATE: March 10th, 2006 - Read the follow up.

I would like to take a moment to congratulate Intel on showing Conroe to both Anandtech and Hexus at IDF. As I suggested a few months ago, Intel derailed themselves a number of years ago by staying with their Pentium 4 architecture. There is little doubt that they will be getting back on the rails later this year.

I would like to pipe in a simple counterpoint on a few things, because I feel it’s important that people understand the entire picture before rushing to judgment. In years of being in this business I cannot recall a time where a company debuts information on a product that is six months out. I can only assume that by doing this they have completely lost faith with their current desktop products.

Intel jumped into their time machine to show off a fetus that has six months to mature before it turns into a baby. They basically gave themselves the opportunity to ride in this time warp without giving AMD a chance to get in the passenger seat. Anytime you compare a future technology with an existing one you should expect to see some performance differences, but looking closer it seems as if they are comparing future technology with older technology, rather than current, in some respects.

First of all, though it’s claimed that you’re running an FX-60 processor on the machine, I have yet to see an established motherboard and processor with an image that says "processor unknown".

You’ll notice that the image I am referring to on Anandtech's website (the bios image) states that the AMD processor is “unknown” which makes me believe that the bios they are running is outdated. So, I did a bit of digging and low and behold, the DFI bios version “D49C-32” they are running is from 10/11/05. There has been 1 major revision with major fixes that include:

Set Cool 'n' Quiet Default to Disabled

- With Cool & Quiet enabled, AMD processors will throttle in order to save power and bring their thermal load down. This means the processor could be running as low as 800MHz in certain programs – no matter what the program is. In theory Cool & Quiet is supposed to throttle up to maximum in games but this is not always the case. No enthusiast PC goes out with Cool & Quiet enabled unless it’s a fanless machine or media center.

Add Support for AMD Athlon 64 FX60 CPU

- According to DFI the FX-60 will not operate correctly without this bios update. Without official support for the FX-60 CPU I’m not sure what we’re comparing against here.

Fix Memory Timings 2-1-1-1-1 and 4-1-1 Mode Wrong & Fix Read Preamble Table Error.

- Memory latency can make a massive difference in performance. If the latency was not running at the correct latency we can see a pretty big difference in all kinds of performance. Anandtech stated “The AMD system used 1GB of DDR400 running at 2-2-2/1T timings…” Apparently this isn’t the case, but they would not be able to tell without having the platform in house.

Fix Fill 3114 SVID&SSID under Cross fire mode.
- More apparent performance issues under Crossfire mode.

Next, when you take a future Intel chipset and compare it to a chipset that no enthusiast supports (RD480) with an outdated bios it’s like taking a Ferrari and putting it on Bias-Ply tires. It’s just not a good way to show off a “new” technology.

Had Intel taken an RD580 (Crossfire Xpress 3200) and coupled with the AMD Athlon FX-60 processor they almost certainly would have seen some better numbers just based on the bios issues alone. The ATi Xpress 3200 would have improved the overclocking and decoding performance as well. You don’t need a time machine to jump over to the nearest Newegg and buy the latest parts. It’s almost like Intel took their time machine 6 months ahead while throwing AMD into a time warp set a few months back in time.

So now a few numbers caught my attention based on another email I received last night.

If we go and check out the numbers on Anandtech we’ll see the Unreal Tournament 2004 benchmark showing 160fps on the unknown AMD X2 processor while the Intel Conroe at 2.66GHz came in significantly higher at 191fps.

Though this isn’t exactly conclusive, if you go back and re-read some old FX-57 reviews on Tom’s Hardware you’ll see a benchmark for the same game set at the same resolution (and the same color depth), the FX-57 running at 2.8GHz scored 183.4fps. The thing is it’s using an Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT which seems to me that there are many variables here when it comes to benchmarking. Perhaps it's somewhere locked in the settings, but I won't know until I sit down and compare our own benchmarks with consistant settings. Note that a single core Athlon 64 4000 achieved a better score in the benchmark run by Tom (160.5fps) than the one provided by Intel (160.4) at IDF. Like I said, I don't view this as conclusive, but it shows that there are variances depending on how the benchmark is setup. Here is a link to Tom’s review. I also don't believe the FEAR benchmarks are accurate, but again we'll know when we get a chance to test it ourselves.

These are just a few of the thoughts that I have been able to gather. I have received over 100 emails in the last 18 hours about this to see what my thoughts are. Quite simply, I would say go back and read my original article on Conroe – I certainly expect Intel to be back on the rails, but I don’t see them to be wiping the floor with anyone other than their Pentium 4 team come launch time.

AMD still has some big performance gains with AM2, we are talking about a new platform with low latency DDR-2 support along with new processors. While I’d love to tell you how much performance difference this would give you on a clock to clock basis, I’m afraid you’ll have to use your imaginations for now.

We can speculate all we want, but why bother? By simply changing the bios and ensuring that Cool & Quiet is disabled, that the FX-60 is fully supported, and that there are no memory timing issues I imagine we would see a fairly significant performance gain on those merits alone.

The long and the short of it is Intel has crafted an excellent marketing strategy to show off their baby in its first trimester. They are trying to win the hearts and minds of enthusiasts half a year before they have anything to show us. They created these platforms in house, and we can only hope they unknowingly crutched the AMD system by using a chipset and motherboard - with an outdated bios - that no enthusiast supports. EDITED FOR CLARITY - If you read the article you'll see that the AMD system is clearly crutched - I am hoping that Intel had no clue that this was the case. I suspect they did this unknowingly.

I’m going to give Intel an “A” for their P.R. effort, good job guys, and thanks for the show. I can’t wait to see the real substance. Conroe looks strong no doubt, hopefully it will be available in volume by the time it launches.

Anyone reading this should also assume that AMD is not standing still. Based on these articles it's clear that this year is going to be absolutely incredible.

UPDATE: March 10th, 2006 - Read the follow up.