In practice

Core 2 Extreme QX9650

While in 2008 there will be four factories producing 45nm chips in volume, for the moment Intel has to rely on one development factory, the D1D, located in Oregon. Production is therefore limited and the release of more affordable models is planned for the beginning of 2008. In the meantime, Pennryn architecture comes in a single model which will be available in mid-November, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 set at 3 GHz.


Composed of two Penryn dies, this will be a quad core processor available like all the other « Extremes » for around 1000$. This price is still discouraging even if it’s a little more justified than with other classic Extremes because it is the only 45nm CPU available before January. Here are the details for the rest of the quad core line and then those of the dual cores:

Power consumption

This is the first area we decided to verify by measuring power consumption of the power supply stage of the processor with the help of an ammetric clip on theATX12V connection line which it uses exclusively. This allows us to better isolate CPU power use than an overall consumption measurement. The only thing we should keep in mind is that the CPU power supply stage has an efficiency between 80 and 90%.


In idle, we obtained 30 w and 131W in load for the Intel QX6850. On the QX9650, these figures decline significantly with 24W in idle and especially 82W in load. This is a very appreciable reduction and we can only wonder why Intel set the TDP of these two processors at 130W.

Overclocking

Our QX9650 was somewhat compliant in terms of overclocking. We were able to obtain a stable 3.4 GHz at 1.25V verified in 30 minutes of Prime95 and 3.7 GHz at 1.35V. These are encouraging results and give us an idea of Intel’s margin in this domain.

The test

Due to a lack of an adequate bios, we should mention that the Penryn doesn’t yet function at its best with nForce 680i motherboards ; the result is several reboot and blue screens whether it’s with an eVGA or ASUSTeK model. The latter however specifies nForce 680i compatibility with this processor in its 45nm ready list which you can imagine is quite long; however in practice we will have to wait for a new bios. This means you will need a good bios before installing a Penryn !

We now move on to a comparison with other dual and quadcore processors in our usual tests. Here are the configurations we used:

- GeForce 8800 GTX / ForceWare 169.01
- 2 x 1024 MB DDR2-800 4-4-4
- 2 x Raptor 74 GB
- Windows XP SP2 French
- Socket 775 : ASUSTeK P5K Deluxe
- Socket AM2 : ASUSTeK M2N32-SLI Deluxe

This was also the occasion to update some of our test protocol.

3ds Max 9 and Maya 8

3ds Max 9 and Maya 8

For this test, we use two test scenes for Maya and 3dsmax developed by Yann Dupont of 3DVF (whom we thank) and using the MentalRay rendering engine. This choice wasn’t arbitrary since this engine is now available for both software and is most commonly used in production.

- The scene with 3dsmax is very heavy in terms of polygons and the number of objects. The objective was to test processor capacity and manipulate a heavy flow of data.

- Maya's scene is much lighter, but uses MentalRay's advanced lighting algorithms and employs the processors’ raw power in terms of mathematical calculations.


The gains offered by the Penryn, whether it’s the QX9650 compared to the QX6850 (quad core), or the E8400 compared to the E6850 (dual core) are minimal at 3% in 3ds studio and even 2% in Maya.

Mathematica 6 and WinRAR 3.71

Mathematica 5.2

In the domain of scientific calculation, we use the new version 6 of Mathematica from Wolfram Research and its integrated benchmark, MathematicaMark2006.


The Penryn has gains of 4-5% here and is far ahead of AMD’s K8. We can only hope the Phenom can bridge the gap.

The tests integrated to MathematicaMark2006 are the following: Data Fitting, Digits of Pi, Discrete Fourier Transform, Egeinvalues of a Matrix, Elementary Functions, Gamma Function, Large Integer Multiplication, Matrix Exponential, Matrix Multiplication, Matrix Transpose, Numerical Integration, Polynomial Expension, Random Number Sort, Singular Value Decomposition, and Solving a Linear System.

WinRAR 3.71

Since its version 3.6, WinRAR was given multithread optimizations. We compress in RAR at the highest level a total of 588 MB of files comprised of 493 Word & Excel files (69 MB), 22 e-mail Eudora files (251 MB) and a single wav audio format file (268 MB).


This time the gain offered by the Penryn dual core is 8% given that WinRAR is heavy in L2 cache use. Gains for the quad core version were smaller at around 6%.

TMPGEnc 4.0 & DiVX 6.7

TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress

We are now using the fourth version of this MPEG-2 encoder. Compared to the third, the latest integrates a several optimizations for the Core 2 and improves performances by approximately 5%. For this test, we continue to encode a 10 minute 16 second DV file to MPEG-2 format in 720x576 with an average bitrate of 4500 Kbits in two paths. The video preview display is activated during this test and the DV file is decoded via a Mainconcept codec, which is faster than decoding in TMPGEnc.


Like in WinRAR, gains are relatively interesting at 8% for the dual core and 5% for the quad core.

VirtualDub & DiVX 6.7

We now use the version 1.7.6 of VirtualDub and the version 6.7 of DiVX which has SSE4 optimizations. We encode the same video source as with TMPGEnc in Fast recompress mode and with the DiVX 6.7 codec in one path with an average bitrate of 1500 Kbits /s, highest quality encoding performance, and Experimental SSE4 full search activated in SSE4 or SSE2 mode. The video preview mode is activated during this test.


The integration of SSE4 offers impressive results because the Core 2 E8400 proves to be faster than the QX6850 while this is a « simple » dual core ! Without SSE4, gains are 5% for the Penryn.

Nuendo 3 & After Effects CS3

Nuendo 3

Something new in our test suite is Nuendo in version 3. This is a solution devoted to audio production and post-production. The test consists of exporting a relatively heavy project to an audio file (thanks to DraCuLaX for the file).


First of all, we can see that Nuendo benefits from the quad core and that even K8 architecture fares well with this test. For the Penryn, we can see gains of 2-3%.

Adobe After Effects CS3

We now move on to Adobe’s After Effects in its CS3 version. Here we apply various effects and filters in video editing and then compile the movie. It’s the compiling time that is measured. Although the quad core does add a small gain, there is less of an advantage here. The Penryn only offers a slight improvement compared to current cores.

Crysis, World In Conflict, Flight Sim X

Crysis, World In Conflict, Flight Sim X

Here we use the processor test integrated in the game from the latest FPS Crysis whose demo was just released. Gains offered by the quad core are minimal, but the game is indeed multithreaded because the transition from 1 to 2 cores increases the framerate from 40 to 60 fps ! Here, the Penryn doesn’t offer any notable gains.


World In Conflict is a recent real time strategy game with a rather heavy integrated benchmark. Here again the increase from 1 to 2 cores results in a gain of 50%, but it is not very affected by the presence of a 3rd or 4th core. The Penryn is 7% faster than the dual core Conroe and 5% faster in its quad core version.


We finish in Flight Simulator X with the framerate obtained when flying over New York after taking off from JFK in high quality. Despite the use of the recent SP1, this game doesn’t really take advantage of quad core processors. The Penryn however is still 8.7% faster than the Conroe.

Conclusion

Conclusion

While the AMD Phenom will not be released for another two weeks, Intel is the first to ready itself for the battle with this fine quad core processor. Performances are 2 to 8% higher compared to the current Core 2 while consuming less power and being cheaper to produce due to a 45nm engraving process.

In the end, the only problem of course is availability, because until the beginning of next year, the Penryn will only come in the expensive Core 2 Extreme QX9650 version. Also it is unfortunate that Intel hasn't pushed the processor further in terms of frequency especially given the margin in overclocking.

So for the moment, the Penryn is more a technological demo and we are impatiently awaiting the arrival of more reasonably priced versions. The only thing is, due to an unfortunate lack of competition, Intel has no real interest to hurry and prefers to take its time for a peaceful transition from 65nm to 45nm. Hello, Phenom…? Are you out there?