So, in the second half of January 2008 Intel is going to massively update their dual-core processor lineup in $160-$260 price range. This particular event became the main topic of our today’s article that will dwell on the new promising Intel processors and the changes they will bring to the mainstream desktop market.
Wolfdale Processor Family: Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400 and E8200
The Wolfdale processor family announced these days that is based on 45nm cores will initially include three Core 2 Duo processor models: E8500, E8400 and E8200 with 3.16GHz, 3.0GHz and 2.66GHz respective clock speeds. Moreover, there will also be a CPU with E8190 model name, similar to Core 2 Duo E8200, but without the virtualization technology support. Later on the fifth CPU will join this lineup: Core 2 Duo E8300 with 2.83GHz clock speed. However, it should happen in Q2 2008 at the earliest. The table below offers a better look at the mass Core 2 Duo processors with 45nm cores:
The pricing info on the new Intel processors is a very important addition to the technical briefs given in this table:
Core 2 Duo E8500 - $266;
Core 2 Duo E8400 - $183;
Core 2 Duo E8200 - $163;
Core 2 Duo E8190 - $163.
It is very nice to see that Intel continues to pursue the price policy many of the computer users approve of: when the new processors are being offered at the same price point as the older ones, so that the old ones get ousted from the market in an evolutionary way. This time, Core 2 Duo E8500 came to replace Core 2 Duo E6850, Core 2 Duo E8400 steps in for the Core 2 Duo E6750, and Core 2 Duo E6550 gives way to Core 2 Duo E8200. In other words, those of you who will be shopping for new dual-core processors within the next few days will already be able to buy more advanced and higher-speed solutions at the same old price.
Let’s take a closer look at the CPUs codenamed Wolfdale:
Wolfdale (left), Conroe (right)
As you can see from the picture, the CPus on 45nm core look almost the same as their 65nm predecessors.
Wolfdale (left), Conroe (right)
Nevertheless, we can see different external electronic components at the bottom of the CPUs from two different generations.
CPU-Z diagnostic utility is already very well familiar with the new processors. It has no problems recognizing Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400 and E8200 CPUs.
Note that our test samples are based not on the first core revision – C0, and it will be the one to actually be used in mass production units.
We would only like to add one thing to the info you can get from the screenshot above. Wolfdale processors can support fractional multipliers, which allowed Intel to make the list of supported clock frequencies even richer. This is exactly what we see in case of Core 2 Duo E8500: it supports 9.5x clock frequency multiplier. Note that the mainboard BIOS also needs to support fractional multipliers for a CPU like that to function properly. However, all leading mainboard maker should release corresponding BIOS updates very soon, so there is no need to worry.
Testbed and Methods
To check out the performance of the new Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400 and E8200 processors and compare their speed against that of their predecessors, we put together a few systems including the following hardware components:
AMD Platform:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2, Windsor).
Mainboard: ASUS M2R32-MVP (Socket AM2, AMD 580X).
Memory: 2GB DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12-1T timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.
Intel Platform:
CPUs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (LGA775, 3.16GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale);
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (LGA775, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe);
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2, Conroe).
Mainboard: ASUS P5E (LGA775, Intel X38, DDR2 SDRAM).
Memory: 2GB DDR2-1066 with 5-5-5-15 timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.
I would like to specifically stress that the Asus P5E mainboard with BIOS version 0502 we used to test Wolfdale processors does support them properly and allows adjusting their clock frequency multiplier with 0.5x increment.
Wolfdale vs. Conroe
First of all we were eager to check out the practical value of all innovations introduced in the new Wolfdale CPUs. Therefore we compared the performance of processors with Core micro-architecture based on the old and the new core working at the same frequencies. For this test we used Core 2 Duo E6850 and Core 2 Duo E8400 processors: they both work at 3.0GHz speed and use the same 1333MHz bus.
The obtained results can hardly be disappointing. New Wolfdale processors turn out much faster than their predecessors even when working at identical frequencies. The average performance gain in this case is 6%, but in some applications it may be much higher. I would also like to add that Wolfdale processors can work at higher frequencies, which indicates clearly that Intel prepared a potential hit.
More detailed results analysis shows that larger L2 cache turns out the determinative factor for higher performance of the new processors. As we may see, the performance gain is especially high in those applications that are sensitive to L2 cache size. For example, Wolfdale’s advantage over Conroe in games reaches 11%, and on average hits 7.2%.
Introduction of Fast Radix-16 Divider also played an important part here: the performance gain in computational tasks, such as final rendering, for instance, also turns out above average. The same significant performance improvement can be observed when we work with H.264 codec from Mainconcept and during video processing in After Effects CS3: it must be thanks to the Super Shuffle Engine unit speeding up some of the SSE instructions processing.
As for the SSE4.1 instructions support, from this prospective software developers aren’t ready for the new processors yet, although these instructions are potentially very demanded. Therefore, we can’t make any specific conclusions here. In fact, only TMPGenc codec may currently boast new instructions support, as well as DivX in experimental mode. Moreover, if you enable Experimental SSE4 full search in DivX, the performance will drop, which doesn’t allow us to state that this codec is nicely optimized for SSE4.1. Nevertheless, we expect to see the applications that would be able to efficiently employ the new SSE4.1 instructions, and then the value of the new SIMD set will become evident. For example, as far as we know, the corresponding changes should be soon made in the upcoming MainConcept H.264 Encoder, Pinnade Studio Plus and Sony Vegas.
Power Consumption and Heat DissipationSince the new 45nm manufacturing technology should definitely affect the electrical and thermal characteristics of the new processors, we decided to pay special attention to practical investigation of these parameters in the new CPUs.
First of all, we measured the operational temperature of our testing participants in idle mode and under high workload. During the tests we used the same Zalman CNPS9700 LED cooler for all CPUs. Enhanced Intel SpeedStep and Cool’n’Quiet 2.0 power-saving technologies were activated. By the way, Wolfdale processors, just like their predecessors, drop the frequency multiplier to 6x in case the workload is low.
CPUs were loaded using Prime95 25.5 utility. The temperature readings were taken with CoreTemp 0.96 utility. The obtained results are given in the table below:
As we have expected, CPUs on 45nm core are overall cooler than their predecessors on Core micro-architecture. However, the temperature different under 100% workload makes only 4-5 degrees. The thing is that Wolfdale processor core is smaller and features higher transistor density within a semiconductor die, which makes it a little harder for the heat flow to dissipate properly. That is why Wolfdale and Conroe heat up almost identically in idle mode. As for the relatively low temperature of AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, with twice as high TDP as that of Core 2 Duo actually, it can be explained by the not very best location of the on-die thermal sensor that is situated quite far from the hottest spots of the processor’s semiconductor die.
Everything we have just said indicates that CPU temperature measurements still offer pretty subjective judgment. Therefore, we decided to pay due attention to power consumption tests, too, that should fully reveal the advantages of the new 45nm core. During our experiments we measured the current going though the processor voltage regulator circuitry. This way we could estimate the actual CPU power consumption disregarding the losses in the voltage regulator circuitry.
The new processors manufactured with 45nm process performed more than impressively. In fact, we didn’t expect the results to be any different, as the new production technology allowed reducing the leakage current thanks to the innovative transistors with metal gate and high-k dielectric. As a result, the power consumption of the new Wolfdale processor under workload is equal to that of two 2-3 year-old processors in idle mode. Actually, Athlon 64 X2 results stress this dramatic difference between the processor generations even more, as its micro-architecture hasn’t been optimized for high performance-per-watt standards.
OverclockingNow let’s move on to the most interesting part of our test session: Wolfdale overclocking experiments. We pin a lot of hopes on the new CPUs from this stand point, because 45nm technology and some other features, such as lower heat dissipation, allow us to expect the new processors to hit frequencies unattainable for the previous Core 2 Duo models.
We used the same test platform for our overclocking experiments as we did for our performance tests. The CPUs were cooled down with Zalman CNPS9700 LED cooler. The CPU stability during overclocking was tested with a 30-minute run of Prime95 25.5 utility.
First of all we tried overclocking our Core 2 Duo E8500 sample without raising its Vcore. In this case the CPU ran stably at 3.66GHz frequency.
Of course, it is a very good result. Core 2 Duo on 65nm cores could reach these frequencies only at increased Vcore. However, we wouldn’t stop here and continued our tests with increased core voltage setting.
Actually, our tests showed that Wolfdale responds very good to Vcore increase. But we didn’t aim for record-breaking speeds, so we only increased the processor Vcore in the BIOS Setup to 1.5V that resulted into the actual 1.42-1.46V taking into account Vdroop. This voltage increase is relatively harmless for a processor using an efficient air cooler and is acceptable for systems running 24/7. However, even in this case our Core 2 Duo E8500 didn’t disappoint us at all.
We managed to get this processor to run stably at 4.37GHz. No doubt: Wolfdale CPUs will become another overclockers’ favorite, because Conroe processors could hardly hit these speeds at extremely high voltages and with special cooing systems involved. By the way, our processor running at 4.37GHz retained quite acceptable thermal mode of only 70°C under workload.
All the above described experiments were performed without changing the clock frequency multiplier: it remained at 9.5x in all cases. That is why the maximum FSB frequency in previous experiments remained 460MHz. However, it would also be interesting to see how well Wolfdale processors can cope with high bus speeds. Therefore, we performed another experiment aimed at finding the maximum FSB frequency for our CPU, i.e. its FSB Wall.
As we found out, the maximum FSB speed for our processor was 540MHz. After that the system would lose stability. So, we can state the new processors have pretty high FSB Wall.
However, great Core 2 Duo E8500 overclocking results were slightly shadowed by the less impressive performance of the youngest model – Core 2 Duo E8200. Our Core 2 Duo E8200 test sample could only work at 3.2GHs at its nominal Vcore setting.
By raising Vcore we could hit higher frequency, but stalled at only 3.88GHz.
Of course, this is not a bad result at all, but nevertheless, Core 2 Duo E8200 yielded significantly to its elder brother, Core 2 Duo E8500. So, it turns out that Wolfdale overclocking success depends a lot on the CPU sample.
ConclusionWell, everything seems pretty clear. Summing up everything we have just said, we can state that new dual-core Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400 and E8200 processors on 45nm cores are great from all stand points. They are faster than their predecessors working at the same clock speeds. Besides, their working frequencies are initially higher than those of previous Core 2 Duo CPUs. And taking into account that Intel is going to sell the new solutions for the price of Core 2 Duo E6850, E6750 and E6550, we can all get “free” performance improvement of 10-15% on new Intel dual-core CPUs.
Moreover, Core 2 Duo’s transition to new manufacturing technology provides additional bonuses to the users. First, they will support of the promising SSE4.1 instructions that will show their best in the future. Second, Wolfdale CPUs are extremely economical. Third, they overclock brilliantly and hence will become overclockers’ choice.
In other words, the second reincarnation of dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture turned out a definite success. The only upsetting thing about it is that the sales of these processors will definitely shake AMD’s positions in the market even more, because they cannot offer anything of the same performance level at the time. All dual-core processors from AMD are slower than the new Core 2 Duo E8000 series, which automatically ousts them from the $150+ price segment, where Intel’s dual-core solutions will now become the only player.
Computer is a fast developing thing, but PC BIOS isn’t. From ancient 386 to modern quad core PC, the Mainstream PC BIOS looks the same, the only difference is more adjustments can be done with today’s BIOS. That’s not enough, we knew BIOS with beautiful UI have been developed for a long time but because of the production cost, no company will bring this kind of “next gen” BIOS to US.ASUS’P5E3 ASUS Express Gate show us some features of the next gen BIOS, But now MSI announces that they will use EFI BIOS on their upcoming mobos, the first one is a new P35-Neo3.
