Intel's New Core 2 Duo
 

I just read an interesting article about Intel's new Core 2 Duo which is supposed to be the next step up from the Pentium platform. Real mean. Real bad. I know this means Pentium processor prices are going to drop like hot rocks but is this new processor something to get excited about yet? Anybody here know how to describe the Core 2 Duo processor in idiot terms for me?

YES! Even before the Conroe and Woodbridge processors where shipping it was clear that NLE performnace benfited from dual-cores. Earlier this year we did our DIY4 - Dual Core Face-Off AMD Athlon 64 X2 vs Intel Pentium D 900 http://www.videoguys.com/DIY4.html

The advantages of Dual Core processors for video editing are significant. The biggest is price / performance. Most video editing applications are written to take advantage of dual processors and hyperthreading, now with a single affordable chip, you can maximize this capability. Those of you who read our DIY3 article are aware of the troubles and tribulations we ran into building a dual Xeon workstation. With a Dual-Core processor the installation and set up of our DIY4 machines was very easy. As you will see from this article, you can build a killer dual core workstation for under $2,000 that will give you outstanding performance for all your editing and encoding needs.

Now the new Intel processors leap frog these machines in performance. We are busy now geting the pieces together for our DIY5 article. It will be a Conroe based workstation that will become my new home editing system.

Chips & motherboards are in tight supply. As a result prices are a bit inflated. These prices will come down quickly as availability increases. When this happens, you're going to want to jump in. I'm thinking early october.

Gary

Thanks! I will follow the info.

The Intel processors look great. I just popped an AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ to replace an Athlon64 3700+. While I haven't benchmarked anything, I have to say that I TOTALLY notice an increase in system zippiness in multitasking and application loading. I like that you can pop in a new processor into the 939 socket, and I'm TOTALLY bummed that their energy efficient 4600+ uses the new AM2 socket. This is the cheapest dual processor upgrade you can do.
Otherwise, you have to buy a new motherboard (time+money), new memory and new processor. I'll do that when main memory is really faster than DDR PC3200, as in 800 MHz DDR2 or something.

I would be REALLY interested in seeing reviews that also consider system power. This would help me decide whether to spend more money on a more efficient yet faster part. If a part will save me 30 watts of continuous usage over a couple of years, as would the Intel Core2 Duo or AMD EE Athlon64 XP, I'd totally go for it.

Power ratings would also put pressure on component manufacturers to deliver most efficient parts yet sell them at a higher cost. 3D graphics card could totally be a power saver if the manufacturers were pressured to put more effort into efficiency. Right now, the drivers of those components are price or GPU power.

Believe the hype, these processors are the ONLY way to go at this point. Anybody considering an AMD setup is nuts.. And this is coming from a guy who has banged the AMD drum for the past 5-6 years....

Jon

Like a lot of folks here, I keep one eye on computer developments as I believe there's no such thing as a computer that's too fast, especially when it comes to video editing.

By all accounts, the "Conroe" Core 2 Duo systems are easily king of the desktop world right now. If you need a new high-end system now, that's the one.

I'd build myself a Core 2 Duo Extreme right now except for one thing...Intel announced a month or so ago that they are accelerating the release of their "Kentsfield" processor from 2007 to 4th quarter 2006. It will be called Core 2 Quadro and is basically two Conroe cores packaged together. Early benchmarks indicate that while it makes almost no difference for word processors etc that don't really much benefit from multi-processing, programs that do benefit can perform as much as twice as well under Quadro as they do under Duo. Tom's Hardware -- which is geared more toward gamers -- actually added PPro rendering to their testing. Render times were cut by a third to almost a half compared to Core 2 Duo and the fastest Athlons. I think the highest end systems will be moving from a 1066 front side bus to 1366, which should also help some video applications.

My read is this:
If you're looking at the very highest end desktop system and can afford to wait a couple of months, hang on for the Core 2 Quadro systems. If you need the best there is now, Core 2 Duo Extreme is it. If you need an economy system, take your choice; AMD dropped their prices hugely to compete based on "price vs performance" so what were high end systems 6 months ago are now pretty inexpensive mid-range computers.

I don't think there is ANY AMD processor that fits into the price/performance spot right now. Sure you can pay $220 for a fast AMD processor, but you can pay $320 for an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 that runs at 2.4Ghz with 4Mb L2 Cache and smokes even AMD's $500 FX processors. At this poing, ONLY if you had a low low budget of $150 or so to spend on a processor AMD may make some sense, otherwise it's all Core 2 Duo...

Jon

We just posted our DIY5 article:

We just posted our DIY5 article:

DIY5 – Intel Core 2 Duo Strikes Back!
Intel regains the top spot for NLE workstations

This summer Intel began shipping their new Core 2 Dual CPUs (code name Conroe). I’d been watching and following the leaks and reports about the new Conroe chips for months. All my favorite hardware websites – Tom’s Hardware, ExtremeTech, Anandtech and many others where posting articles on the remarkable performance of these chips. I knew I had to have one. I would make my own personal dream machine, to use in my new home editing suite. I called my dream machine the Vaporizer, and I could not wait to get it built.


Click here for the complete article http://www.videoguys.com/DIY5.html

Gary

Gary, nice article. Thanks.

BTW, Tom's has just posted that Kentsfield is officially released so presumably they'll flow to retailer in the next month or so. Video rendering -- which of course is what we all care about here -- benefits hugely from Quad Core (at least in PPro 2), although most games and office apps WON'T initially benefit.

I haven't seen any 1333MHz FSB motherboards yet, but I suppose they'll be along soon, and if a person's really in a hurry you can always use one of the 1066 boards linked in Gary's article.

Gary,

At the end of the DIY5 article, there is a list for a custom Xeon computer with four cores. I've heard that Xeon is for servers and not desktop computers, so what is the purpose of this custom Xeon?

What about two dual Core Xeons?

Yes - you can now go to 4 cores. The new Dual dual-core Xeons are now shipping. So far we have 3 suggestions for those looking in that direction:

* Dell - Precision Workstation 690
* HP - Workstation xw8400
* DIY - Tyan Tempest i5000XT (S2696)

When getting into building a DIY machine with two processors I have to warn you: It's not that easy. the added weight, heat and other mechanical issues makes building a dual processor system much more complicated than a single processor. That's why I have the HP & Dell listed first. And I didn;t list any dual dual-core opterons just becuase this is an Intel focused thread.

here's a good article to read:
Double Double: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700
Intel pops two Core 2 Duo chips into a single package, shipping the first quad-core CPU for desktop PCs. Can four CPU cores find a home in your PC? We put the new QX6700 on the test bench to find out.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2049683,00.asp

Gary
Videoguys.com

all the tests i've read, to date, show the quad cores to be arguably faster than a dual core machine. in some instances, they're slower, due to the negoiating time between cores. i suspect, unless the NLE software is multi-threaded, quad cores won't prove much of an advantage over dual cores.

ok. i see i'm a bit confused. My post was about 4 cores from dual dual-core xeons.

The new quad core sprocessors are shipping. these look rteally exciting. our DIY5 machine is 100% quad core compatible. just go with the quad instead of the dual.

Gary