AM2 or Conroe?

[Shadow Conception]

So, with all the new generation CPUs coming out, which will you/dream about/hopefully will upgrade to, AMD's new AM2 or Intel's new Conroe?
I'm pretty much broke and don't have $530 to spend on anything, so I'd go for the Conroe if I had the money, since previews are showing very good performance with an Intel Conroe, while an AM2 doesn't show much of a difference when compared to a present Socket 939.

 

[shoRunner]

since we don't know the true production performance of either...no one can really answer with any sort of certainty

 

[jayanath]

whats a Conroe

 

[aniruddha23]

blu ray or HD-DVD?

actually ur questions a lil easier. although im a big fan of AMD my bet this time around is definitely on conroe.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

odds are against AMD.

 

[gobucks]

it all depends on things like pricing, availability, overclocking, etc. It doesn't sound like Conroe will be widely available until 2007. 2006 will mainly consist of yonah, merom, and presler production, with a few conroes thrown in. And you can bet that the conroes Intel does sell in 06 are a lot more likely to be niche, high end products rather than the low end overclocking monsters we want. Also, we have yet to see what kinds of clockspeeds Intel plans to release conroe at. We saw previews of a 2.8GHz conroe, and it destroyed; however, i also remember seeing previews of Banias and Yonah at similar speeds, but the actual products were sold in the 1.66-2.13GHz range, so take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.

I am pretty dissapointed with AM2, though. It shows virtually no performance gain with DDR2 (of course, AMD has been saying this all along, but according to everest, AMD's memory controller is just not very efficient relative to socket 939's), even at DDR1000 speeds. It makes me kinda glad I went ahead and settled on a dual core Opteron setup rather than waiting for AM2 to provide exactly the same stuff. Still, AMD has always provided a better bang for the buck, even when they were losing the technology race (Thoroughbred v. Northwood anyone?). AMD will simply have to price their products more attractively relative to Conroe offerings. The only area they won't be able to compete is at the absolute top of the line, since they will need to hit 3.2-3.4GHz speeds in order to provide competition to a 2.8GHz conroe (if one actually comes to market)

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: jayanath
whats a Conroe

It looks tasty, but we need production silicon before we can make a final judegement. Keep in mind though AMD is also planning on inproving the logic circuits for Athlon and those chips will be avalable in early 2007.

 

[Jules]

use the damn search button

 

[w00t]

Conroe is the new Intel chip.

edit: Judging from the Conroe Benchmarks on AnandTech it looks promising but we'll see also I dont think AM2 is going to show any real performance considering it's one pin more and DDR-2 basically. As i rember it did better only in business benchmarks.

 

[Henny]

Originally posted by: gobucks
it all depends on things like pricing, availability, overclocking, etc. It doesn't sound like Conroe will be widely available until 2007. 2006 will mainly consist of yonah, merom, and presler production, with a few conroes thrown in. And you can bet that the conroes Intel does sell in 06 are a lot more likely to be niche, high end products rather than the low end overclocking monsters we want. Also, we have yet to see what kinds of clockspeeds Intel plans to release conroe at. We saw previews of a 2.8GHz conroe, and it destroyed; however, i also remember seeing previews of Banias and Yonah at similar speeds, but the actual products were sold in the 1.66-2.13GHz range, so take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.

I am pretty dissapointed with AM2, though. It shows virtually no performance gain with DDR2 (of course, AMD has been saying this all along, but according to everest, AMD's memory controller is just not very efficient relative to socket 939's), even at DDR1000 speeds. It makes me kinda glad I went ahead and settled on a dual core Opteron setup rather than waiting for AM2 to provide exactly the same stuff. Still, AMD has always provided a better bang for the buck, even when they were losing the technology race (Thoroughbred v. Northwood anyone?). AMD will simply have to price their products more attractively relative to Conroe offerings. The only area they won't be able to compete is at the absolute top of the line, since they will need to hit 3.2-3.4GHz speeds in order to provide competition to a 2.8GHz conroe (if one actually comes to market)

Conroe will be avail in volume in 2H'06 since it's on the same 65 nm technology as Pressler. Speeds and tentative prices are out there. It should be an overclocker's dream chip. Conroe is from the Merom family.

 

[Goi]

My money's on Conroe. I kinda sick of the K8, and I'm sure AMD engineers are too. A new architecture is always more fun

I'd be surprised if the new Core architecture doesn't beat the 3 year old K8 architecture.

 

[obeseotron]

I love AMD. I use an AMD chip in my personal system, and have been evangelizing their chips to others for the last 3 years. That said, you really have to be an AMD fanboy type to pretend Intel isn't about to get the performance crown back with Conroe. Anand's recent articles on AM2 show it to be a couple percentage points faster than 939, and that's it. Nothing has come to light to contradict the early benchmarks of Conroe Anand and others did. A guy over at Xtreme Systems claims to have an early chip, and even at 2.4Ghz the numbers are incredible. I'm suspicious just like anyone else, but just ignoring the numbers and saying they are fixed without any evidence doesn't make any sense.


Pricing is available for both Conroe and AM2 (Google it) and it looks like Intel is going to have a big advantage there too. Availability is going to be questionable for Conroe, AM2 will almost certainly beat it to market, but remember, Intel has like 4 or 5 fabs running off 300mm 65nm wafers, AMD has one 200mm 90nm fab and one barely operational 300mm 90nm fab. Just because Conroe is going to make up a small amount of total Intel chips for a while doesn't mean you won't be able to buy one in 2006.

 

[RallyMaster]

Don't know yet. If AM2 fails to perform (since they've barely gotten up to Skt 939 performance yet), then I suppose Conroe would be the better choice.

 

[Dman877]

If Conroe production is limited in 2006, you can bet the oem's will get all the chips first...

 

[Operandi]

Conroe is an entirely new CPU core. AM2 is a new a new socket with the same CPU with exception of a DDR2 support. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out which one is going to have superior performance especially given the benchmarks we've seen.

 

[KayKay]

AM2 has nowhere near the performance increase that conroe has over current gen stuff.

Conroe

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Goi
My money's on Conroe. I kinda sick of the K8, and I'm sure AMD engineers are too. A new architecture is always more fun

I'd be surprised if the new Core architecture doesn't beat the 3 year old K8 architecture.

AMD K8 will get architecural changes in 2007. Prehaps they will call it K9 (Woof).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Conroe, AM2 chips will be the same architecture as s939 chips with a new memory controller and DDR2. Expect maybe a 5% overall performance increase on AM2, or better yet, just read Anand's preview.

As things stand, it looks like similarly-priced Conroe parts will have a 17-20% performance advantage before overclocking is taken into account.

If Conroe forces a price crash on AM2 parts, then things will get interesting. It looks like Intel is low-balling on their Conroe prices. Will they follow through?

 

[Nextman916]

when is conroe scheduled for release?

 

[Chris2wire]

Actually I'd go AM2.

The first chips won't be that great, but the whole point is to introduce a new socket with more memory capabilities. DOwn the line the new M2 socket will house the greatest CPUs, much better than anything intel will offer

 

[AmdInside]

Conroe is very exciting. I suppose AMD would have to price their's around 25% less to account for 20% lower performance. Has Conroe performance been validated by 3rd party website?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: Chris2wire
Actually I'd go AM2.

The first chips won't be that great, but the whole point is to introduce a new socket with more memory capabilities. DOwn the line the new M2 socket will house the greatest CPUs, much better than anything intel will offer

And you know this how? Currently, only rumors and speculation support the notion that K8L will launch on AM2. Other rumors indicate that AM3 will launch alongside K8L in 2007.

AM2's future is not set in stone, and it could be a dead-end street.

You do not know what future CPUs will be on AM2. You don't even know IF there will be any future CPUs on AM2. Nor does anyone else.

It makes more sense to get a Conroe-based system when Conroe launches and keep an eye on AM2's future. If powerful K8L-based procs are released that will actually work on old AM2 boards (also not guarenteed), it would then make sense to ditch one's Conroe CPU and motherboard for a cheap AM2 board + K8L chip. That way, you get to make your decision on that which is known rather than making guesses based on rumors.

 

[Henny]

Originally posted by: Nextman916
when is conroe scheduled for release?

July. You can bet Intel is doing everything they can to have Conroe based systems in the channel during BTS.

 

[imported_rod]

Well, what i've seen and heard of AM2 hasn't been very impressive. Conroe however promises alot. If it delivers, I'll probably heading over to Intel in a year or two (my current rig has still has some life in it).

RoD

 

[phaxmohdem]

Originally posted by: Googer
AMD K8 will get architecural changes in 2007. Prehaps they will call it K9 (Woof).

Its called K8L for the record