View this article at: http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/29/merom.benchmark.results/ Tuesday, Aug 29, 2006 9:05am Merom benchmarks show up to... 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]