conroe - whats the big deal

tails2

okay forgive me for sounding so stupid or nooby or whatever, but what exactly is the big deal about intel's conroe chip. i mean everyone keeps saying that its a dual core chip but sure isnt the pentium d a dual core chip. and from reading reviews we can see that the conroe has a max of 2.96ghz where as the pentium d can get higher than that as standard before overclocking.

now as i said forgive me for sounding so silly but could someone please explain the whole thing to me cos i just shelled out on a complete new system that i will build myself and i bought a pentium d so was i foolish and should i have waited??? and what is the difference between the conroe and the D?? thanx in advance for any light being shed on this for me thanks.

CSSource God

I dont know the tech specs on the conroe but: All i know is that the benchmarks are showing that it murders AMD FX60's and FX62's. Anything that can do that is obviously a monster:) Surely someone will explain this in more detail for you.

Cuddlesworth

Intel moved from the P3 to the P4 with the belief that its netburst architecture would scale to 5ghz plus. This never happened. Meanwhile Amd came onto the market with a lower clocked processor that in nearly everything but dvd encoding whooped the best that intel had to offer. Intel in desperation started to release hotter chips that draw more power. Amd on the other hand had every edge, better performance, better value and better technoligy.

Then a small team of engineers created the pentium M(afaik a re-worked pentium3). This chip was exactly what intel needed, but after all these years of saying that having more ghz was better they decided to ignore it for the desktop market.

Intel started to lose more market share as dual cores were realeased.
Amds cpu's were always designed to be used in dual core, Intel slapped 2 Pentium 4's together. They lost badly to Amds chips in real world performance.

Now the same team who made the pentium M have created Conroe. This chip clock for clock beats Amds chip by a large margin and is going to be priced lower than its counter part. The same position that Amd have been in for years.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html

tbh

Richard Dower

4MB of level 2 cache...ooh sweet jesus!
The E6600 should be able to reach 3GHz, so 333FSB x 9 = 2997, so it's DDR2 667. If you can get your memory to run 3-3-3-12 you're cookin'!

I got myself a Thermalright Ultra-120 and two low RPM 120MM fans for Conroe.

zilog_jones

Pretty much what krazy 8s said:

- The NetBurst artictecture ended up being a waste of time, which was proven by the Pentium M and Athlon XP
- The Pentium D really is just two P4's slapped together - and because of this it is not as efficient dual-core CPUs that were designed properly with proper transports between everything.
- Clock speeds just don't matter any more - in all fairness they only really did matter in any way was back in the pre-Pentium days when most the x86 CPU manufacturers were producing more-or-less identical chips. The first Athlons and the Pentium M really proved that you have to take a lot more factors into account than just the clock speed.

SouperComputer

In any event, conroe when it first arrives will be VERY expensive. It wouldnt surprise me if AMD still gave more bang per buck.

After six months, when conroe hype/prices drop it should be interesting to see what AMD have up their sleeve. Im pretty sure they have somthing.

Mutant_Fruit

SouperComputer wrote:

Im pretty sure they have somthing.

Nah, unless the rush something out the door pretty damn quickly, they have nothing. Their roadmaps don't list a new architecture til (i think) christmas time, and a new architecture is what they need to compete unfortunately. Intel have won this round by a fair margin.

conzy

AMD will be releasing K8L around Christmas.......

SeanW

conzymaher wrote:

AMD will be releasing K8L around Christmas.......

K8L?

Matthewthebig

they so should have called it K9...

Liber8or

Conroe is effectively 2x FX-62's. So Quadcore if you will.

Unfortunately this Technology is very early as to date, very little software uses HT, nevermind 2 Cores ffs. But Conroe and 4x Cores...lol!

Vista will be the first Microsoft OS that will utilise multiple Cores so until then people wont experience the true benefit of Multi-Core Processing.

For those thinking about upgrading, its confirmed that the ASUS P5WD2-E Motherboard will be able to use a Conroe Processor...

EDIT : Clock speeds arent everything. FSB, Cache and the FPU is just as important if not more...

tails2

thanks for the replies, now i dont seem so out of the loop on this.

i do however have a few more questions now though.

because the pentium D is basically just 2 p4's is it in anyway not good or is it still a good processor? i am in china at the moment and got all my stuff for my new build here so for a pentium D 930 3.0ghz new, it only cost me about 150 euros.

secondly would there be any point to upgrading to conroe when vista arrives. lucky for me i bought the ASUS P5LD2 DELUXE Motherboard so the conroe should be compatible with that right, or is the pD still good enough to handle vista?!!

zilog_jones

Liber8or wrote:

Vista will be the first Microsoft OS that will utilise multiple Cores so until then people wont experience the true benefit of Multi-Core Processing.

Bollox. As far as the OS is concerned, multiple cores are the same as multiple CPUs. All NT-based Windowses can handle multiple proccessors (well at least from NT4 anyway), though this was usually limited to 2 CPUs for non-server editions. And SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) kernels for Linux have been around since 1996.

Only real problem is that with stuff like games, designing them to work well on SMP systems *and* single CPU systems pretty much requires double the work for the programmers, and up until recently they mostly haven't bothered at all because of the small market share of gamers who could avail of SMP. If they designed them only with SMP in mind, they'd run significantly slower on uniprocessor systems.

because the pentium D is basically just 2 p4's is it in anyway not good or is it still a good processor?

It's still a damn sight better than single-core P4's, and you'll still benefit from stuff designed for SMP - just not as well as proper dual-core CPUs like the Athlon 64 X2 or Core Duo.

Liber8or

zilog_jones wrote:

All NT-based Windowses can handle multiple proccessors (well at least from NT4 anyway), though this was usually limited to 2 CPUs for non-server editions.

My bad, you are quite right. NT4 does support Multiple Processors and utilises them. I forgot, even though my friend had a Dual Processor P2 back in the day...

zilog_jones wrote:

Only real problem is that with stuff like games, designing them to work well on SMP systems *and* single CPU systems pretty much requires double the work for the programmers,

Yes, games and software are the last stage to move forward on using multiple Cores/Processors. I would have to say that it would be more than double the work, simply because simulataneous work from Cores/Processors is not just double the work, its a lot more. This is because cooperative work requires a huge amount of thinking and tedious work as 2/4 threads running at the same time can be counter-actively destructive just as much as constructive and efficent. I would say its a lot more difficult than twice the work to keep 2 simultaneous threads to work correctly in Software...

[/QUOTE]

There are quite a few Dual-Core CPU's out there that are not really Dual Core, if you get my meaning. At the moment we have Single Cores with HT, which is effectively one Processor and two threads, but there are Dual Core Processors that do NOT support HT, meaning that even you are still getting 2 Threads - One from each core.

If you want True Dual Core, make sure it stipulates that on the details of the Processor. So effectively you can have up to 4 Threads. 2x Cores BOTH with HT available. Oh! Ad 4Mb L2 Cache, (2Mb for each Core... ). Price gets jacked up but its more future friendly than A Dual Core Chip with NO HT, which is infact a P4 with HT...

SickBoy

Liber8or wrote:

There are quite a few Dual-Core CPU's out there that are not really Dual Core, if you get my meaning. At the moment we have Single Cores with HT, which is effectively one Processor and two threads, but there are Dual Core Processors that do NOT support HT, meaning that even you are still getting 2 Threads - One from each core.

If you want True Dual Core, make sure it stipulates that on the details of the Processor. So effectively you can have up to 4 Threads. 2x Cores BOTH with HT available. Oh! Ad 4Mb L2 Cache, (2Mb for each Core... ). Price gets jacked up but its more future friendly than A Dual Core Chip with NO HT, which is infact a P4 with HT...

What the hell are you talking about?

zilog_jones

Yeah, what are you on? A CPU with 2 cores is a dual core CPU regardless of whether they have HT or not. No AMD processors AFAIK use HT, yet there's still dual core X2's and Opterons, and they're just as dual core as any PD or dual-core Xeons. HT's just an extension to a core.

And yeah, you're probably right regarding the extra work required with SMP game development - I was just saying "twice the work" because they would essentially need to design a uniprocessor engine along with a SMP engine (not sure if "engine" is really the right terminology there), but I should have really said "at least twice the work". It's still possible though, regardless of this - even Quake III can avail of SMP.

DemonOfTheFall

Liber8or wrote:

Conroe is effectively 2x FX-62's. So Quadcore if you will.
Unfortunately this Technology is very early as to date, very little software uses HT, nevermind 2 Cores ffs. But Conroe and 4x Cores...lol!
Vista will be the first Microsoft OS that will utilise multiple Cores so until then people wont experience the true benefit of Multi-Core Processing.
For those thinking about upgrading, its confirmed that the ASUS P5WD2-E Motherboard will be able to use a Conroe Processor...
EDIT : Clock speeds arent everything. FSB, Cache and the FPU is just as important if not more...

I think you're a bit mixed up there mate. Conroe is only dual core, NOT QUAD CORE.

Also, there is nothing AT ALL special about vista as far as quad-core utilisation. XP Home and XP Pro can both use multiple processors absolutely fine. It's down to the application not the OS whether multiple cores are used or not.

Please get some basic facts down before posting rubbish, it is in the forum rules.

DemonOfTheFall

tails2 wrote:

thanks for the replies, now i dont seem so out of the loop on this.
i do however have a few more questions now though.
because the pentium D is basically just 2 p4's is it in anyway not good or is it still a good processor? i am in china at the moment and got all my stuff for my new build here so for a pentium D 930 3.0ghz new, it only cost me about 150 euros.
secondly would there be any point to upgrading to conroe when vista arrives. lucky for me i bought the ASUS P5LD2 DELUXE Motherboard so the conroe should be compatible with that right, or is the pD still good enough to handle vista?!!

The 930 is still a great chip, and a very good overclocker. With decent cooling you should hit 4 GHz, and at 4 GHz Netburst chips are still absolute animals.

I wouldn't bet on any motherboard you buy right now supporting Conroe. There's the sticky issue of silent revisions between different revistions of boards.

For example the Intel "Bad Axe" board, Revision 4 can support conroe, but the Revision 3 can't. It's unlikely that you could tell the difference when you were buying it until you got it home.

It's not as simple as just updating the BIOS to make a motherboard support conroe, the boards need new VRMs (Voltage Regulators) to be able to give conro the right juice.

Mutant_Fruit

As far as game multithreading is concerned, it's not as hard as you make it out to do it at a basic level.

You can do a few "easy" things with multithreading which won't give the best results possible, but will usually give better results than singlethreading. For example, if you have two CPU intensive tasks i.e. model creation and model movement, you can run those on two seperate threads. Windows will split that onto the two cores automatically, so all you worry about is making sure the models are created before you try to move em. This doesn't take too much effort when programming.

Thats a basic level of multithreading. If model loading takes 3x longer than model movement, you'll only see a speedup of 33% (if my maths are right) from this way of multithreading. If model loading takes the same amount of time as movement, you'll see a 100% improvement.

Of course, if you want to use multiple threads to do the model loading in order to get the fastest possible load time on an N core system, you will find that it is a lot more complicated and will increase programming time by a fair margin. But even still, it won't double the complexity of the game engine.

On a side note: A P4 with HT is in no way comparable to a dual core chip. Not even in the same ballpark!

conzy

Unless the application is written specifically for Hyper threading, HT can actually half performance if the CPU and the Virtual CPU need to use the same registers..........

Liber8or

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

I think you're a bit mixed up there mate. Conroe is only dual core, NOT QUAD CORE.

I was trying to simplify the construction of the Conroe by implying 4 Cores rather than 2, because both cores on the Conroe have HT, hence 4 threads. So instead of explaining HT and Dual Core i used a simple 4 Core "theoretical" example. I know there is only 2 cores...

It's down to the application not the OS whether multiple cores are used or not.

Indeed, it depends on the Application if it utilises Multiple Threads/Cores not the OS, what i implied was Vista would be the first OS to use Multiple Cores and would make use of this advantage. To which i was corrected afterwards about NT4...

I do not post rubbish on Forums. What i gave was informative, albeit i made one error about Vista being the first OS that can will use Multiple Cores/Threads. The rest is people's misinterpretation of what i said. Next time, i wont make short cuts... its seems people get castrated on these Forums for one slipup. Its always easier to condemn effort rather than praise it...

Cuddlesworth

Liber8or wrote:

I was trying to simplify the construction of the Conroe by implying 4 Cores rather than 2, because both cores on the Conroe have HT, hence 4 threads. So instead of explaining HT and Dual Core i used a simple 4 Core "theoretical" example. I know there is only 2 cores...

I dont think Conroe has Hyper threading.

conzy

Im nearly sure Conroe doesnt use Hyper threading......

Unless the Extreme edition has it.........

But since they have two real cores and will have 4 real cores a few months after, I doubt they will implement it.......

Unless the AMD 4X4 actually hurts them

Liber8or

conzymaher wrote:

Unless the Extreme edition has it.........

Correct. The early Conroe has HT disabled, but the later models will be HT Enabled. In the form of Extreme Editions.

More info here:
http://www.warp2search.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=28776

blackdog2

not that hyperthreading makes a huge difference...

Mutant_Fruit

Liber8or wrote:

Indeed, it depends on the Application if it utilises Multiple Threads/Cores not the OS

It depends completely on the OS. If the OS doesn't support multithreading or multiple cores, your application can't use them. You can also look at it from the point of view that even if the OS supports multiple cores and threading, it can't force the application to use multiple threads/cores if the app isn't programmed for it.

Of course, the OS can force an application to only run one thread at a time and only work on one core if the OS feels like it...

EDIT: I'd just like to point out that HT is also recommended to be turned OFF on any server machine. It has a horrible performance impact on SQL servers.

conzy

Hyper Threading technology stated to be disabled for all processors at the moment but we could see Intel releasing a new Core 2 Extreme processor with HT enabled at clock speeds over 3GHz

Its far from confirmed............

Cuddlesworth

I cant remember where I saw it but I'm fairly certain Intel are not putting in HT because it will degrade performance. That and with proper dual cores and quad cores around the corner there is no point for the stop gap solution that it was.

astrofool

Conroe does not have HT in any shape or form right now. The reason the P4 had HT was because of its massive pipeline, many parts of the chip stood idle, and it didn't take much space to add enough logic to implement HT. As Conroe doesn't have an overly long pipeline, in order to implement HT, they'd need to add alot more transistors, which would probably be better utilised in cache or a second core anyway. They may eventually add a form of HT, but i'd be betting on many smaller core's, like Cell, but able to support more instructions than an SPE.

The sweet spot for the home user is dual core anyway, as this enables a core to be available to the user, and another core for background operations. This is why HT was able to make Windows a smoother experience. Implementing HT on a dual core doesn't do the same job, and in fact can make the scheduler overhead worse as it has to work out which jobs it can send to real cores and virtual cores.