tech industry
08/29/2006, 9:05am, EDT
Tuesday, August 29th
Merom benchmarks show up to 40% gains
The first benchmarks of Intel's new Core 2 Duo chips, code-named Merom, show gains of up to 40 percent. ExtremeTech has several interesting numbers in their test between a Yonah-based Core Duo and a Merom-based Core 2 Duo. The test CPUs were the 2.16GHz (T2600) Yonah and the 2.33GHz (T7600) Merom -- a clock speed difference of approximately 9 percent. Some tests revealed gains of up to 40 percent; more notable tests include Lightwave rendering (gains of 25%), 3ds Max (gains of 15%), After Effects (gains of 15%), Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (gains of 20% [same GPU]), and PC Mark Memory performance tests showing gains of 42 percent despite Yonah and Merom using the same speed memory. The 64-bit enabled Merom began shipping yesterday, although systems with thew chip are not expected until later; industry watchers believe that Apple will ship systems with new chips within the next month. The tests also showed Merom Core 2 Duo chips using roughly the same power per clock GHz, despite earlier reports suggesting the chips would consume "much" less power. [Example chart included]
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Consider the iMac and Mini customers who could benefit from this right now.
Or, you could sit there an look despairingly into your half-empty glass.
Sounds like great fun.
Not.
First, although the names are similar, the Core Duo and the Core 2 Duo are 2 different chip technologies. This is stated quite explicitly in the article as to even question Intel's reasoning for naming them so.
Second, the 25-40% boosts are only in limited application tests. The 40% is attributed to nothing more than a doubling of the L2 cache from 2 to 4MB and a slight increase in the bus speed. Very little in the actual chip design is attributing to the increases. 64-bit is all well & fine when the apps to use it are available. Name the 64-bit Mac OS X app you're going to use w/ Merom today?
The point being that for such a marginal overall performance increase, the hype is not justified. This is more on the scale of half GHz speed increase.
So its like so many other of Intel's offerings with new chip designs. Generally a new chip architecture does not significantly outperform the previous high-end chip. They start around the same playing field, but the new one has the room to grow. So, then, even more so, why would you expect incredible gains?