If your uses extend beyond gaming, and are CPU intensive, then Conroe certainly holds advantages. I've never denied that.
The bottom line is that you Intel fanboys can claim all you want that Conroe is going to be better for gaming, when ultimately some one with a good CPU will benefit far more by spending that money on a better video card.
And Cyborg, your power argument doesn't hold any more water than any other argument. The P4 processors, especially Prescott, had power and heat issues yet you continued to buy Intel. Why is that exactly?
From [H]ardOCP
Overall Performance Summary
It is very interesting that in all of our testing, both “what is playable” testing and “apples-to-apples” testing, the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 and Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 are very close in performance. In fact, in some games they are dead even. The price difference between the two is very extreme with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 costing $999 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 at $530. Does it look like the price is justified between the two for gaming? We can safely say “no” as far as gaming goes with this gameplay testing we have performed.
As for the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62, all of our testing shows that it does trail the two new Intel CPUs in gameplay performance. So, if you wanted to point one out as being a “winner” then for sure it is the new Intel Core 2 X6800 and E6700. But, if you look at the amount of difference between the AMD and Intel CPUs, you will see that it isn’t enough to amount to anything. The only game that we saw any real-world difference in was Oblivion, and even that was tiny. A little overclocking would clear that difference up. Overall, the performance difference isn’t enough to amount to any gameplay experience differences in these games. One thing is certain: these are very fast platforms and they all provided a very enjoyable high-end gaming experience in every game.
If I had an older system and had to put my foot down and choose a system with the future in mind, I would probably lean toward the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 platform for “future proofing” if Oblivion were any indication of future games. If you have a higher-end AMD Athlon 64 system platform right now though, there really isn’t any need to go scrambling to Intel Core 2 at this particular time for gaming. I’d wait it out and see what the future brings.
The Bottom Line
We have proven here that the flurry of canned benchmarks based on timedemos showing huge gains with Core 2 processors are virtually worthless in rating the true gaming performance of these processors today. The fact of the matter is that real-world gaming performance today greatly lies at the feet of your video card. Almost none of today’s games are performance limited by your CPU. Maybe that will change, but given the trends, it is not likely. You simply do not need a $1000 CPU to get great gaming performance as we proved months ago in our CPU Scaling article.
When it comes to playing games, the only persons that need to be even a little concerned with upgrading their CPU to a Core 2 processor might be those with high-end SLI, CrossFire, or GeForce GX2 video cards and we have yet to prove that due to the testing limitations we ran into. Then, and only then, you might see an Intel Core 2 processor deliver a performance advantage.
Lastly, I would advise everyone that is thinking of rushing out and purchasing their latest upgrade that we are sure to see HUGE pricing slashes out of AMD before the end of the month.
