Product Listing

Sneak Peek: Core 2 Extreme X6900 and Athlon 64 FX-64 Performance Preview

By Zachary Chan - 2 Aug 2006

Gaming Benchmarks

Results - 3DMark06 and AquaMark 3

3DMark06 can be considered one of AMD's better showing with the FX-62 being faster than the Core 2 Duo E6600 and the FX-64 posting an almost 7% improvement in its CPU rendering workloads. However, the same can be said for the Core 2 Extreme X6900, which looks like it will be nearly 9% faster than the X6800 in the same tests. The overall 3DMark scores are closer to each other since this is primarily a graphics benchmark, but you can still make out the differences in CPU performance where the Athlon 64 FX-64 lies between the Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700.

In AquaMark3, the Athlon 64 FX-64 performs almost identically to the FX-62 and doesn't seem to show any improvement at all despite its extra 200MHz clock speed. The Core 2 Extreme X6900 however, is still able to show an almost linear performance improvement from each multiplier step up.

You'd probably have noticed that the two AMD systems still push out more frames-per-second than the lower end Core 2 E6600 despite its lower processing performance. This is due to the highly optimized graphics subsystem of the nForce 590 SLI and ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. In any case, while the new Core 2 processors come in handy for CPU intensive tasks, don't expect them to make any big impact for actual gaming performance as it's going to be just incremental gains as we've highlighted before and here again. However, when game engines evolve to posses a more advanced AI and are able to tackle more complex physics routines to harness the current generation of dual-core processors, perhaps then the CPU would once again be a strong indicator of overall gaming performance. Till then, if you already have a decently fast platform but need a big leap in frames per second achieved or wish to game at much higher graphically pleasing settings, opt for a big graphics card upgrade or better yet, go with the SLI or CrossFire route for an even bigger boost.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.