Components

Intel's New Core 2 Duo Processors Run Blazingly Fast in PC World Tests

Power to Spare

Our motherboard Core 2 Duo test setup consisted of an Intel 975X Express board, 2GB of DDR2-667 memory, a pair of SATA hard drives configured in a striped array, and an nVidia GeForce 7800GT-based graphics card. We swapped first a 2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 chip and then a 2.67-GHz Core 2 E6700 chip into that setup to generate scores we could compare directly to an otherwise identically configured system featuring AMD's new DDR2-capable AM2 platform and its top-of-the-line FX-62 processor.

Both of the Intel setups bested the AMD-based system on every test in our WorldBench 5 suite as well as on every one of our gaming tests (see chart below). The improvement on WorldBench 5's multitasking tests, which involve running a Web browsing session in Mozilla while encoding a file with Windows Media Encoder, was particularly dramatic. You'll also see notable gains in Photoshop and similar graphics applications.

			Productivity Tests				Gaming Tests1
TESTED SYSTEM	CPU	World-Bench 5	Multitasking (seconds)	Adobe Premiere 6.5 (seconds)	Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 (seconds)	Ahead Nero Express 6 (seconds)	Doom 3 (fps)	Far Cry (fps)	Return to Castle Wolfenstein (fps)
Reference PC
Intel Core 2 Extreme PC	2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800	160	279	273	222	181	157	205	n/a
Intel Core 2 Duo PC	2.67-GHz Core 2 E6700	153	296	283	235	185	151	193	n/a
AMD Socket AM2 FX-62 PC	2.8-GHz Athlon 64 FX-62	137	362	308	274	187	123	145	n/a
Intel Pentium D 940 PC	3.2-GHz Pentium D 940	113	500	434	351	199	103	111	n/a
Out-of-Box Core 2 Duo PC
ABS Ultimate X92	2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800	181	252	239	189	152	208	269	313
CyberPower Gamer Infinity SLI Ultra	2.93-GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800	167	267	260	207	157	164	206	269
Dell XPS 7003	2.67-GHz Core 2 Duo E6700	153	297	300	221	185	140	180	241
Dell XPS 410 3	2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo E6600	138	382	306	237	208	146	181	199
Velocity Micro Vector GX4	2.13-GHz Core 2 Duo E6400	117	385	344	277	468	91	128	173
Out-of-Box Comparison PC
Xi Mtower 64 AGL-SLI	2.6-GHz Athlon 64 FX-60	142	341	283	298	160	n/a	n/a	156
Micro Express MicroFlex 34645	3.4-GHz Pentium 4 650	111	672	326	421	212	n/a	n/a	140
Footnotes: 1Tests run at 1024 by 768, 32-bit color without anti-aliasing. fps = frames per second. 2This system was liquid-cooled and overclocked to 3.5-GHz. 3This system ran Windows XP Media Center Edition. 4This system had 1GB of RAM. 5This system ran Windows XP Home. Chart notes: Reference PCs are systems built by the PC World Test Center using motherboards that support given processors and a common set of components; these PCs were configured with 2GB of DDR2-667 memory, a pair of SATA hard drives in a striped array, and an nVidia GeForce 7800GT-based graphics card. All systems ran Windows XP Profesional and had 2GB of RAM unless otherwise noted. Higher is better for WorldBench 5 and the gaming tests. Elsewhere, lower is better. Bold denotes best score. Italicized systems are non-Core 2 machines for testing comparison. Tests conducted by PC World Test Center. For details on how we test, go to our WorldBench 5.0 page. All rights reserved.

More Test Details

The Core 2 Extreme X6800 reference system logged a score of 160 on WorldBench 5, 17 percent higher than the 137 turned in by the corresponding system using AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62. And the PC using the less expensive E6700 chip managed a score of 153 on WorldBench--still 12 percent better than the FX-62 PC's mark.

In addition to our lab-built systems, we tested several vendor-supplied PCs. For example, Dell's $3985 XPS 700, a high-end system based on the 2.67-GHz Duo E6700 processor, came with 2GB of RAM, an nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 Dual-GPU graphics board with 1GB of SDRAM, and two 320GB SATA hard drives in a Raid 0 array. That system (whose price includes a 24-inch wide-screen monitor) also earned a score of 153 on WorldBench 5, well ahead of the 142 posted by the previous top scorer, a 2.6-GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-60-based Xi system.

Dell's $2350 XPS 410--a relatively mainstream system based on the midrange 2.4-GHz E6600 CPU--shipped with 2GB of RAM, an nVidia GeForce 7900GS graphics board, and two 320GB SATA drives configured in a Raid 0 array. That machine (whose price includes a 20-inch wide-screen LCD) earned a score of 138 on WorldBench 5, matching the score posted by AMD's high-end FX-62 chip on our motherboard test bed.

But even those notable scores paled in comparison to the performance of the overclocked system that ABS sent us. The $4199 water-cooled ABS Ultimate X9--which shipped with 2GB of RAM, a pair of Radeon X1900 Crossfire graphics boards, two superfast Western Digital 150GB SATA drives configured in a striped RAID array, and a Core 2 Extreme X6800 chip overclocked from 2.93 GHz to run at 3.5 GHz--turned in a WorldBench 5 score of 181. Obviously, this system is not a likely choice for typical buyers, but its score is by far the highest we've seen from a shipping system. And it may indicate how much headroom Intel's Core microarchitecture possesses.