Conroe versus Prescot?

[jon67]

Periods != commas. Regardless, they'll smack around your 570 in 1280x1024 too... since my vid card doesn't become gfx limited in CSS (extremely cpu intensive, source engine) and ut04 (also cpu intensive) which are the games I play.

Great. Now go ahead and try what I described above, and watch as your system turns into a stuttering hellhouse.

Strange how you come into this thread with just bashing and no constructive arguments, then when someone dares to point out the strong sides of prescotts (excellent multitasking), along with a justified counterattack on the poor multi-tasking properties of other single-cores, you avoid the issue and turn sour.

 

[$BangforThe$]

What pressies are we talking about the latest Dual cores are pretty decent CPU's and a lot more effient than they use to be.

I am proud to say I never sold 1 pressie. Hell never bought one. Now the latest dual cores thats a differant story. I am referring to the 65nm cpu's here.

 

[deeznuts]

LMAO... you have NO idea what you are talking about. Prescott made Intel MILLIONS.... even when they did suck (the 478 prescotts) we still sold the shit out of them. Prescott was a moneymaker for Intel... plain and simple.

Poncho, I know you work for Intel, but you have to take off your blue tinted glasses on this one. Prescott costed Intel millions. Ultimately, it was a profitable product, i.e. Intel made a profit on the Prescott core, but that's just not good enough. AMD made huge market share gains in the last few years. Most likely because Intel did not have a product good enough to keep people from buying an AMD cpu. How many times did Intel adjust their earnings and revenue guidance down in the last couple of years?

You want to know how much Prescott hurt Intel? I'm no CPU expert, so I won't even try to argue about any technological issues. I'll tell you this, if I wasn't lazy I would go look up Intel's market share right before Prescott came out, and each year thereafter until now. Then look at actual CPU's sold. That will tell me how many sales shifted from Intel to AMD. Then you can take Intel's ASP and come up a rough figure of Revenue lost during this period due to CPU sales.

While it's fine and dandy to make millions off of a product, it's actually not when those millions are/were less then they were the year before. Prescott caused intel to lose money.

 

[$BangforThe$]

He has a very strong point Poncho. He really does.

 

[RogueTrip]

pretty pathetic saying they sucked that bad, they run hot, i'll give you that, but to say they suck, no sir, i still run a prescott 3.0 @ 3.3Ghz Socket478, i run 4x512mb ddr400 sticks and a single 7800GT 256mb, for some reason i could only say they sucked if they couldn't run games/applications that well, now i'm even throwing prey at it all high details @ 1280x1024, and it runs great! I can't turn the resolution up yet cause i have a 17" CRT monitor thats is limited at 1280x1024, but have plans on picking up a 22" CRT shortly so i'm sure the res will kick up soon enough and probably still be good. It can fold like there is no tomarrow.

I picked my 3.0 up 2 years ago for 220$, that wasn't a bad price to pay for what was good at the time and even does the job good today.

Now if you want to talk benchmarks over a few fps less than a A64 then stop being pathetic and get out, reason, cause you can't game, fold, im and do encoding at the same time on a A64 without serious lagg.

Is the processor the greatest now, no, there is better, but as i've decided awhile ago, i'm gonna wait for more multi-threaded apps/games to appear, and then grab a quad-core, maybe wait for a oct-core.

BTW with a Tt Tower 112 Pure Cu and some generic thermal paste i'm pulling off 46c idle/ 59c load. Not great, but not as bad as i've seen some williametts get, my friends 1.8ghz P4 hits 75c at load for 3 years plus with no probs.

 

[Poncho]

Poncho, I know you work for Intel, but you have to take off your blue tinted glasses on this one. Prescott costed Intel millions. Ultimately, it was a profitable product, i.e. Intel made a profit on the Prescott core, but that's just not good enough. AMD made huge market share gains in the last few years. Most likely because Intel did not have a product good enough to keep people from buying an AMD cpu. How many times did Intel adjust their earnings and revenue guidance down in the last couple of years?

You want to know how much Prescott hurt Intel? I'm no CPU expert, so I won't even try to argue about any technological issues. I'll tell you this, if I wasn't lazy I would go look up Intel's market share right before Prescott came out, and each year thereafter until now. Then look at actual CPU's sold. That will tell me how many sales shifted from Intel to AMD. Then you can take Intel's ASP and come up a rough figure of Revenue lost during this period due to CPU sales.

While it's fine and dandy to make millions off of a product, it's actually not when those millions are/were less then they were the year before. Prescott caused intel to lose money.

You are confusing Tejas with Prescott on this one. Intel lost something like 3 billion with tejas (3 billion is what I've heard around work). Now... when they decided to scrap Tejas in favor of NGMA they HAD to stick with Prescott since thats what was available. The lost market share has very little to do with prescott and everything to do with marketing and a "incorrect" way of thinking... namely the "clock speed is king" mentality. Had they not pumped so much time and money into Tejas they would have released a better product and Prescott would have died after the s478 design which is where this "stigma" comes from. Prescott on LGA775 was a decent, say that with me... DECENT... not great but decent, design. LGA775 prescott was better than AMD in a lot of areas, multi tasking being the biggest, but because of a misguided way of thinking AMD was able to release a better, across the board, design.

 

[Donnie27]

BTW with a Tt Tower 112 Pure Cu and some generic thermal paste i'm pulling off 46c idle/ 59c load. Not great, but not as bad as i've seen some williametts get, my friends 1.8ghz P4 hits 75c at load for 3 years plus with no probs.

I agreed with everything until you got to that one. Not true at all. Most hit a 2GHz Wall and the hottest mine, 1.7GHz, ever got was 52C (overclocked) and 47C stock when my office was Warm. Idle temp is (since my wife is still using it) is between 37 to 39C depending on the room temp.

As big as a so called Dog it was, it still kicked ass with streaming apps. Unlike my dearly departed Athlon 1333 and 1600+ it didn't just all of sudden fry and die, neither was overclocked LOL! Now you wanna' talk hot?

 

[Donnie27]

You are confusing Tejas with Prescott on this one. Intel lost something like 3 billion with tejas (3 billion is what I've heard around work). Now... when they decided to scrap Tejas in favor of NGMA they HAD to stick with Prescott since thats what was available. The lost market share has very little to do with prescott and everything to do with marketing and a "incorrect" way of thinking... namely the "clock speed is king" mentality. Had they not pumped so much time and money into Tejas they would have released a better product and Prescott would have died after the s478 design which is where this "stigma" comes from. Prescott on LGA775 was a decent, say that with me... DECENT... not great but decent, design. LGA775 prescott was better than AMD in a lot of areas, multi tasking being the biggest, but because of a misguided way of thinking AMD was able to release a better, across the board, design.

That's why I like posting to you. You post straight no BS info and opinions. Even if something doesn't go Intel's way and we all know it doesn't every time, you easily point it out. I saw wear Intel wasted something like 2.4 billion and never knew it reached 3, chaulk one new one up!

Not onely would an AMD employee every admit something like that, hell their Fans wouldn't either.

 

[StealthyFish]

what have you got to say chaos ninja?

 

[nigerian_businessman]

This thread really needs locked. I haven't seen one actual answer to the guys question, just a bunch of pointless arguing over essentially nothing.

THEY'RE JUST FUCKING PROCESSORS.

The shit of it is, I was actually interested in the topic at hand, but unfortunately because you guys feel the need to wave your e-wangs around, the topic won't get addressed, leaving the OP and those of us interested with nothing but your mindless bullshit arguing.

Are you guys seriously so pathetic that you have to argue for 5 fucking pages about this? Is your ego so entwined with your processor of choice that none of you can just let it go? Its not as though someone fucked your mother or keyed your car.

 

[$BangforThe$]

I think the OP's question was fully ans. . The first pressie's were real shit. The last ones the present ones I would very much like to see them go to 45nm. But that is not to be.

 

[$BangforThe$]

This thread really needs locked. I haven't seen one actual answer to the guys question, just a bunch of pointless arguing over essentially nothing.

THEY'RE JUST FUCKING PROCESSORS.

The shit of it is, I was actually interested in the topic at hand, but unfortunately because you guys feel the need to wave your e-wangs around, the topic won't get addressed, leaving the OP and those of us interested with nothing but your mindless bullshit arguing.

Are you guys seriously so pathetic that you have to argue for 5 fucking pages about this? Is your ego so entwined with your processor of choice that none of you can just let it go? Its not as though someone fucked your mother or keyed your car.

You should be [H]ard gawd. LOL

 

[nigerian_businessman]

He asked for a performance comparison, i.e. some benchmarks or a link to a review comparing the two, not a bunch of opinions. I'd like to see some benchmarks too! anyone in here have a conroe and an old prescott sitting around?

reason i'm interested is because my computer's power supply just died and I'd like to use it for an excuse to just get a whole new computer, with wifey being none the wiser, but i'm gonna have to get a motherboard that supports conroe and one of those cheapo dual core prescott based processors until it comes out (cause I need my computer daily).

 

[sabrewolf732]

Great. Now go ahead and try what I described above, and watch as your system turns into a stuttering hellhouse.

Strange how you come into this thread with just bashing and no constructive arguments, then when someone dares to point out the strong sides of prescotts (excellent multitasking), along with a justified counterattack on the poor multi-tasking properties of other single-cores, you avoid the issue and turn sour.

Regardless, prescots are just bad compared to intels other chips. You guys trying to excuse them for being bad is kind of comical.

Read genius, I said bad COMPARED TO OTHER INTEL CHIPS. Wow.... And they're not excellent at multi tasking, If I *could* build a dual Pentium M system it would rape the press watt per performance. Fact is Im dissipating far less than 30 watts of heat @ 2GHz. Efficiency wise, my pentium M walks all over your press. You trying to excuse your prescott for not being the greatest with the argument of hyperthreading being your saving grace is just plain bullshit.

 

[Poncho]

Read genius, I said bad COMPARED TO OTHER INTEL CHIPS. Wow.... And they're not excellent at multi tasking, If I *could* build a dual Pentium M system it would rape the press watt per performance. Fact is Im dissipating far less than 30 watts of heat @ 2GHz. Efficiency wise, my pentium M walks all over your press. You trying to excuse your prescott for not being the greatest with the argument of hyperthreading being your saving grace is just plain bullshit.

First off you can't build a dual P-M system... so that point is moot. Secondly... Prescotts and the Northwoods with HT were great at multitasking, much better than anything at the time until AMD came out with dual core. I love that you condemn prescott's multi-tasking abilities then praise the P-M. Now... don't get me wrong, I love my Dothan (have 2 laptops both 1.8/533 2mb) but a multi tasker it is NOT. Is portability wasn't an issue I would take a 600 series Prescott over a P-M any day. They are simply "smoother" to operate.

 

[sabrewolf732]

First off you can't build a dual P-M system... so that point is moot. Secondly... Prescotts and the Northwoods with HT were great at multitasking, much better than anything at the time until AMD came out with dual core. I love that you condemn prescott's multi-tasking abilities then praise the P-M. Now... don't get me wrong, I love my Dothan (have 2 laptops both 1.8/533 2mb) but a multi tasker it is NOT. Is portability wasn't an issue I would take a 600 series Prescott over a P-M any day. They are simply "smoother" to operate.

Notice I said, "if I *could*". Also, you could build a dual xeon system or dual a64 system and straight up rape the prescott in multi tasking. I never claimed the PM was a great multi tasker, all I said was prescott wasn't intels nicest processor.... and then this clown needed to say a bunch of bullshit. Multi tasking is null for me, I fold while im in school or at work and I game for maybe 10 hours a week and browse the internet.

 

[Poncho]

Notice I said, "if I *could*". Also, you could build a dual xeon system or dual a64 system and straight up rape the prescott in multi tasking. I never claimed the PM was a great multi tasker, all I said was prescott wasn't intels nicest processor.... and then this clown needed to say a bunch of bullshit. Multi tasking is null for me, I fold while im in school or at work and I game for maybe 10 hours a week and browse the internet.

So you are comparing a DESKTOP processor to server/workstation processors now? Jesus man... no shit dual xeons are going to be better at multi tasking. Prescott was never designed to compete with Xeon... it was made to compete with AMDs DESKTOP processors. And guess what.... until AMD went to a dual core design they did compete in that market. After AMDs dual core came out then AMD's was a better ALL AROUND design, until then... for the normal user (somebody who does more than game) Intel was still better. Quit trying to compare apples and oranges.

 

[coldpower27]

This thread really needs locked. I haven't seen one actual answer to the guys question, just a bunch of pointless arguing over essentially nothing.

THEY'RE JUST FUCKING PROCESSORS.

The shit of it is, I was actually interested in the topic at hand, but unfortunately because you guys feel the need to wave your e-wangs around, the topic won't get addressed, leaving the OP and those of us interested with nothing but your mindless bullshit arguing.

Are you guys seriously so pathetic that you have to argue for 5 fucking pages about this? Is your ego so entwined with your processor of choice that none of you can just let it go? Its not as though someone fucked your mother or keyed your car.

I did myself, I linked a review with the Pentium 4 631, performance wise that is pretty comparable to the Pentium 4 630 the 1 means 65nm, and to switch it to regular Prescott just go to Pentium 4 540.

 

[wee96]

This thread really needs locked. I haven't seen one actual answer to the guys question, just a bunch of pointless arguing over essentially nothing.

THEY'RE JUST FUCKING PROCESSORS.

The shit of it is, I was actually interested in the topic at hand, but unfortunately because you guys feel the need to wave your e-wangs around, the topic won't get addressed, leaving the OP and those of us interested with nothing but your mindless bullshit arguing.

Are you guys seriously so pathetic that you have to argue for 5 fucking pages about this? Is your ego so entwined with your processor of choice that none of you can just let it go? Its not as though someone fucked your mother or keyed your car.

Oh go ripoff some 90yr old lady

 

[R0N1]

Conroe is seriously faster than a Prescott, based on all the previews I've read through..

Northwood was also better than the Prescott when they came out. Prescotts only overclocked better and had 1mb of L2 cache, but they got hotter and was more inefficient than Norhwoods. The increase in speed was really small. Later they changed socket to LGA775 and with the new chipsets they got DDR2 support and more of other features. The
Prescott was not any good.

 

[/dev/null]

You are confusing Tejas with Prescott on this one. Intel lost something like 3 billion with tejas (3 billion is what I've heard around work). Now... when they decided to scrap Tejas in favor of NGMA they HAD to stick with Prescott since thats what was available. The lost market share has very little to do with prescott and everything to do with marketing and a "incorrect" way of thinking... namely the "clock speed is king" mentality. Had they not pumped so much time and money into Tejas they would have released a better product and Prescott would have died after the s478 design which is where this "stigma" comes from. Prescott on LGA775 was a decent, say that with me... DECENT... not great but decent, design. LGA775 prescott was better than AMD in a lot of areas, multi tasking being the biggest, but because of a misguided way of thinking AMD was able to release a better, across the board, design.

I never had problems with AMD's in multitasking but then again, I was "dual core" (SMP) before dual core became the in thing

 

[Donnie27]

I never had problems with AMD's in multitasking but then again, I was "dual core" (SMP) before dual core became the in thing

I never had a problem Multitasking with AMD single core processors either, they just weren't as fast when ask to Multitask. As the other said this didn't change until X2 shipped or yes, you had to go Dual Processor when many Intel users didn't. No, I'm not saying it was as fast as two AMD or Intel processors.

 

[sabrewolf732]

So you are comparing a DESKTOP processor to server/workstation processors now? Jesus man... no shit dual xeons are going to be better at multi tasking. Prescott was never designed to compete with Xeon... it was made to compete with AMDs DESKTOP processors. And guess what.... until AMD went to a dual core design they did compete in that market. After AMDs dual core came out then AMD's was a better ALL AROUND design, until then... for the normal user (somebody who does more than game) Intel was still better. Quit trying to compare apples and oranges.

Ok Poncho, I don't really care if you work for intel or not mkay? Go try to lecture the person that first tried to compare my pentium M to their prescott after I said, "prescott wasn't intel's best" That's all a said, I didn't say "OMFG PRESCOTT IS A PILE OF SHIT GO AMD LEETSAUCE". Seriously, f4nboys away.

 

[Donnie27]

Ok Poncho, I don't really care if you work for intel or not mkay? Go try to lecture the person that first tried to compare my pentium M to their prescott after I said, "prescott wasn't intel's best" That's all a said, I didn't say "OMFG PRESCOTT IS A PILE OF SHIT GO AMD LEETSAUCE". Seriously, f4nboys away.

I have to agree with you here, I liked my Northwood/i875 (still have it) so much I never had anything to do with Preshott or even their follow ons. I know you built a Pentium-M and the rig is mainly for gaming. Same reason I built a 3500+, mainly for gaming.

I didn't like Prescott (only the first 478) because it gave off too much heat.
I didn't like X2 because it costed too frackin' much.

In both cases, it doesn't mean either sucked.

I don't know if I would have done anything differently if I didn't own a Northwood. I agree with those saying follow on steppings weren't bad at all and besides gaming, AMD was more hype (when price was factored in, higher A64 prices) than substance until the X2 shipped. I don't have to tell you I spoke up for Intel even when it wasn't cool to do so. I can link you to many threads where I was called an Intel F@n to prove it

 

[deeznuts]

You are confusing Tejas with Prescott on this one. Intel lost something like 3 billion with tejas (3 billion is what I've heard around work). Now... when they decided to scrap Tejas in favor of NGMA they HAD to stick with Prescott since thats what was available. The lost market share has very little to do with prescott and everything to do with marketing and a "incorrect" way of thinking... namely the "clock speed is king" mentality. Had they not pumped so much time and money into Tejas they would have released a better product and Prescott would have died after the s478 design which is where this "stigma" comes from. Prescott on LGA775 was a decent, say that with me... DECENT... not great but decent, design. LGA775 prescott was better than AMD in a lot of areas, multi tasking being the biggest, but because of a misguided way of thinking AMD was able to release a better, across the board, design.

No I remember the scrapping of Tejas, it was a huge event. You are saying lost market share had very little to do with Prescott? Well from my rudimentary research just conducted now courtesy of google, Prescott was introduced in 1st quarter of 2004, Tejas was supposed to be introduced in Q2 of 2005 (this was delayed from an earlier planned launch apparently). Therefore lost market share from 1st Quarter of 04 to Q2 of 05 can be directly attributed to Prescott. Some quoted Mercury Research figures put this at around 2% market share lost in that period. And I do speculate this is offset somewhat from Centrino/Pentium M sales.

I find it very interesting that Tejas was cancelled in May of 2004, just a couple of months after the launch of Prescott. Are you saying Prescott had nothing to do with Intel abandoning Netburst and cancelling Tejas? If not, then the $3B figure you quoted is also partially attributable to Prescott, do you not agree?

Look, I'm not saying or arguing that Prescott is all shitty. But when it first came out it was shit, I think it even contributed to the demise of Tejas (since you work at Intel you may have better insight than me on this), contributed to loss of market share, and costed Intel money. Causing Intel to lose market share is causing lost revenue. Prescott itself may be profitable in the litereal sense of Revenue vs. COGS, but you cannot sit there and argue it didn't cost Intel. That's all I am saying.

 

[MrGuvernment]

He is, btw I have more than one system, and regardless my pentium m and/or athlon 64 would beat your p4 570 in games either way. GG @ you.

incase you didnt know, computers dont "only" play games.

Northwood was also better than the Prescott when they came out. Prescotts only overclocked better and had 1mb of L2 cache, but they got hotter and was more inefficient than Norhwoods. The increase in speed was really small. Later they changed socket to LGA775 and with the new chipsets they got DDR2 support and more of other features. The
Prescott was not any good.

I had thought Pressy performed better then northies at high clock speeds (around 3.2ghz or higher) and this was also why intel was going with faster Ghz for pressies, aiming for the 4ghz?

 

[coldpower27]

Conroe is seriously faster than a Prescott, based on all the previews I've read through..

Northwood was also better than the Prescott when they came out. Prescotts only overclocked better and had 1mb of L2 cache, but they got hotter and was more inefficient than Norhwoods. The increase in speed was really small. Later they changed socket to LGA775 and with the new chipsets they got DDR2 support and more of other features. The
Prescott was not any good.

The thing is though with Prescott the die was smaller then Northwood, so it was cheaper to make even though it wasn't quite as good performing on the Socket 478.

Prescott was one of Intel's more lackluster processors, but it isn't a complete POS, is what everyone basically trying to convey.

 

[altcon]

Conroe VS Presscot...
Sorta like Unkown new Ferrari model VS a Hyundai Accent.
What is this thread?
Without any comparison to next gen CPU's or even AMD64, all by itself, presscot blew.

 

[altcon]

Prescott was one of Intel's more lackluster processors, but it isn't a complete POS, is what everyone basically trying to convey.

No it actually is.
In my lab there are some issues that always come to haunt us.
1)Lousy PSU's
2)Lousy ECS mobo's have busted caps
3)Overhetaing Presscot chips
It's in the main three hardware reasons for PC problems for the masses, I say it blows.

 

[CHAoS_NiNJA]

what have you got to say chaos ninja?

Prescott sucks. Go upgrade.

and now to answer all you guys in a single bound:

Its the cases fault! Its the companys fault! Its the thermal paste fault! Its everything elses fault! Its not that hot! I'm a consumer whore!

Prescott sucks. Shut it. I could do a shoddy thermal paste job on a Northwood in a case with shitty airflow and it'd be fine, or at the very least wouldn't damn near catch fire.

Also, I learned something I didn't know before. Hating a single thing a company does instantly makes you a !!!!!! of its opposing company. Hmmm. "The More You Know".


One last thing: I love how before Conroe was announced, all the intel fans laid down and took the punishment they had coming. but now that this new amazing core is coming, all the intel !!!!!!s grew some balls and decided to stand up for themselves. Thats cool and all, but you're still defending a shitty product. Save you balls for A) someone who gives a damn and B) Conroe. You know some noob is gonna tear it up just because hes got a bone to pick with intel.

Drunk posting is awesome.

 

[Donnie27]

Drunk posting is awesome.

Might be awesome but it also get's you BANNED

 

[jon67]

Ok Poncho, I don't really care if you work for intel or not mkay? Go try to lecture the person that first tried to compare my pentium M to their prescott after I said, "prescott wasn't intel's best" That's all a said, I didn't say "OMFG PRESCOTT IS A PILE OF SHIT GO AMD LEETSAUCE". Seriously, f4nboys away.

Fine, anyone can go ahead and lecture me, I.m not a computer expert. I do, however, have thousands of hours of first-hand experience with prescott systems, both at work and home. I.ve been using computers professionally since 89 and I know what kind of response and performance I want from a system.

Sorry if I misunderstood your post, but then again your next posts oozed of soreness and anger over someone attacking your own system, so I guess none of us are quite objective I.m getting a T2500 system next week, and yes, I expect it to "rape" my prescotts per anem.

 

[coldpower27]

No it actually is.
In my lab there are some issues that always come to haunt us.
1)Lousy PSU's
2)Lousy ECS mobo's have busted caps
3)Overhetaing Presscot chips
It's in the main three hardware reasons for PC problems for the masses, I say it blows.

No it's not, all that means is that someone installed inadequate cooling for the processor.

 

[coldpower27]

Prescott sucks. Go upgrade.

and now to answer all you guys in a single bound:



Prescott sucks. Shut it. I could do a shoddy thermal paste job on a Northwood in a case with shitty airflow and it'd be fine, or at the very least wouldn't damn near catch fire.

Also, I learned something I didn't know before. Hating a single thing a company does instantly makes you a !!!!!! of its opposing company. Hmmm. "The More You Know".


One last thing: I love how before Conroe was announced, all the intel fans laid down and took the punishment they had coming. but now that this new amazing core is coming, all the intel !!!!!!s grew some balls and decided to stand up for themselves. Thats cool and all, but you're still defending a shitty product. Save you balls for A) someone who gives a damn and B) Conroe. You know some noob is gonna tear it up just because hes got a bone to pick with intel.

Drunk posting is awesome.

Good luck having anyone believe you when your crediblity went down the drain with your 6600 GT and 6800 Ultra comments.

And when people don't agree with your opinions. "Just shut it" ha, quick way to get everyone to like you or show that your unbiased.

 

[Eradan]

I feel qualified to answer the OPs question given my recent upgrade from Pentium 4 640 to a 2.4Ghz Conroe. A bit of perspective...

I switched to AMD from Intel shortly after Socket A appeared on the market. My first AMD was a Duron 700. I moved on to an Athlon XP 2000+, then to an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton at 2800+ speed. With the Barton coupled with a Radeon 9800+ Pro, WoW was somewhat sluggish. After almost two years with the same great system, it was time to upgrade. Enter Athlon 64 3000+. I made the mistake of getting a 6600GT to go with that chip (my first PCI-e card). I was very disenchanted with the A64. I'm an avid gamer, I program, develop Web sites, databases, encode and rip movies and music, and edit photos with Photoshop. In all these things, the A64 didn't feel any faster than my retired Barton CPU.

This past winter, I'd had enough of the sluggishness while working on a development project. Multiple Web site open, Access, Excel, and several sessions of Visual C#. Toggling between them with 1GB of RAM was bearable but aggravating. I put the A64 aside for an aging 3.0Ghz Northwood. Added an Asus 6800GE and gaming performance in City of Villains was noticably smoother. Day-to-day desktop desks was smoother--not hugely better, but better nonetheless. Soon after, I lost the Northwood and added the 3.2Ghz P4 640 Prescott and Radeon X1800XT.

Much better. Naturally gaming was greatly improved due to the video card but my other tasks were considerably (noticably) smoother as well. The Windows hourglass icon reared its ugly head less and less. Then three weeks ago...

...enter Conroe. I swapped my 955XBK and Prescott with the E6600 and 975 Bad Axe. Gaming improved only slightly (HL2 and CoV). I'm not talking about benchmarks, just the general vibe I got from the new hardware. Normal desktop tasks are a delight. No waiting for anything. I'm talking 21 seconds in Super Pi while downloading a 400MB file and copying a 60 gig folder from one drive to another. While alt-tabbing out of CoV. Fun stuff and its the first PC I've been truly satisfied with since my Barton/9800 Pro rig.

A lot of you that haven't upgraded in some time that are planning to go Conroe are going to be pretty happy. If the prices stay near the pricelists on the Web, its going to be a lot of bang for the buck.

One other thing I've enjoyed the last few weeks: I sold my X1800XT because I wanted to try something else. In the past, I've always kind of bummed while looking at video card benches when all the site are using AMD FX chips or Intel Extreme chips. It's nice now knowing my little Conroe is as faster or faster than those CPUs. I can see the framerates I might actually get with that 7950GX2 or X1900XTX. (I have the HIS card in my sig on the way from Newegg as I write this mini-novel.)

Here's a compare URL for you PCMark 2005 fans:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm05=354439

Finally, since I'm a new poster to these parts, I'd add that I have more than 10 years professional experience as a hardware tech and network administrator. I've been pounding computer keys since I bought my Commodore VIC20 with paper route money sometime way back in the 80s. I have fond memories of my C64, Amiga 500, and Amiga 1200. I remember standing in line for Windows 95 so I could install it over DOS on from a stack of floppies on DX2/66. Been doing this stuff for most of my life and I think the results presented above were achieved by someone that kind of knows what they're doing.

And just a reminder to you guys gnashing teeth and bashing heads--this stuff is supposed to be fun.

E

NOTE: This post was composed in Safari on my OS X G4. I need that new video card!

 

[nigerian_businessman]

Finally, since I'm a new poster to these parts, I'd add that I have more than 10 years professional experience as a hardware tech and network administrator. I've been pounding computer keys since I bought my Commodore VIC20 with paper route money sometime way back in the 80s. I have fond memories of my C64, Amiga 500, and Amiga 1200. I remember standing in line for Windows 95 so I could install it over DOS on from a stack of floppies on DX2/66. Been doing this stuff for most of my life and I think the results presented above were achieved by someone that kind of knows what they're doing.

And just a reminder to you guys gnashing teeth and bashing heads--this stuff is supposed to be fun.

E

NOTE: This post was composed in Safari on my OS X G4. I need that new video card!

Bah. If you were a real techie you wouldn't have given a damn about Win 95 because you would have been using Desqview/X or OS/2 Warp.

J/K! Welcome to the forums

 

[altcon]

No it's not, all that means is that someone installed inadequate cooling for the processor.

I'm talking retail.
So Intel supplied inadequate heatsinks for all the Presscot processors?
This is your wisdom?

 

[coldpower27]

I'm talking retail.
So Intel supplied inadequate heatsinks for all the Presscot processors?
This is your wisdom?

No, that means, they weren't properly mounted and the problem were attributed to user error. the heatsinks themselves are fine.

No that means the case airflow wasn't good then, a properly designed Prescott system is fine and runs adequately.

Self Built systems are fine with the right air flow and over heating is due improper ventilation, if retail you mean Dell or HP, then they either didn't supply enough case fans or the system got logged up.

 

[nooh]

I have a presscott which i have overclocked to 4.15ghz and it has killed every benchmark i threw at it.

If its value for money then i think presscott cores have really won it.

I even checked on the internet and i noticed that after 3.7ghz things really change with that core against the other chips.

PS after i did the benchmark i showed it to a AMD follower , after that he changed his tone of what he thought of INTEL.

The pc i use has a 3200 skt 939 , the D is from my sons PC

 

[Rocco123]

I have a presscott which i have overclocked to 4.15ghz and it has killed every benchmark i threw at it.

If its value for money then i think presscott cores have really won it.

I even checked on the internet and i noticed that after 3.7ghz things really change with that core against the other chips.

And it will get destroyed by a Conroe clocked at half that speed.