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

Battle of the Titans

In the past two articles we've touched on Intel's newly launched Core 2 microprocessors, with the first covering the performance and technology of the initial three announced models, the Core 2 Duo E6600, E6700 and the Core 2 Extreme X6800 in detail. We then delved into the thermals and power consumption of these new processors, comparing the effectiveness of the advanced power saving features in the new Core microarchitecture against the previous generation Netburst and AMD's current Athlon 64 FX line-up.

At this point, you've either been blown away by the sheer round-about turn Intel has made with the Core 2 processor on all fronts from price/performance to power saving and heat dissipation or for the more level-headed, you're probably asking what can be expected from the two microprocessor giants in the future, or at least until the end of the year?

AMD has already responded with the recent dramatic price cuts across their desktop line-up to somewhat level the playing field with the Intel Core 2 in terms of price/performance in the short term and have stolen Intel's limelight slightly with their ATI buyout. Then there is the AMD 4x4, AMD's dual-core, dual-socket technology that is all hyped to take back the enthusiast crown.

Intel on the other hand seems to be riding easy with Core 2, though it is in the grapevine that they have sped up their quad-core processor roadmap as a precaution, just in case AMD's 4x4 does indeed make a big splash. However, all these technologies are still too far off into the future to foresee accurately and thus, we won't go too far as to speculate the 'what ifs' and the 'whens'.

Instead, let us take a look at the near future. AMD's next confirmed high-end processor part will most definitely be the Athlon 64 FX-64 and Intel themselves have the Core 2 Extreme X6900 slated in their roadmap. Both these high-end parts have originally been predicted to be released at the end of 2006, but Intel's current lead with their Core 2 launch have prompted rumors that AMD may have the Athlon 64 FX-64 out as early as August.

Test Setup

In the following pages, we will attempt to take a sneak peek into the performance levels of these upcoming CPU. Both the AMD Athlon 64 FX-64 and Intel Core 2 Extreme X6900 are merely frequency updates to their predecessors. The Athlon 64 FX-64 should be clocked at 3GHz (up from 2.8GHz of the Athlon 64 FX-62) and carry the same 2x1MB L2 cache and 125W TDP design. The Core 2 Extreme X6900 will also be identical to the current X6800, but will run at 3.2GHz instead (up from 2.93GHz). As of the point of publication, both CPU vendors do not endorse the availability of these parts, but from their respective projected roadmaps and educated speculation based on information available, the specs of the upcoming CPU variants are probable.

For comparison we will be reusing our benchmark scores from our Core 2 Performance Review article, which includes the Athlon 64 FX-62, Core 2 Duo E6600, E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800. The test bed configuration will be the same as before as well, but we will list it down below for reference. Since our Athlon 64 FX-62 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 processors are both multiplier unlocked, we are able to overclock them to these speeds through a simple multiplier increase. All other settings like memory and bus speeds remain intact. The CPU-Z screen below show the overclocked CPUs that tally with the speculated frequencies of the FX-64 and X6900 respectively.

AMD Athlon 64 FX Configuration

• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI chipset)
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-62
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 @ FX-64 (3GHz, 200x15)
• 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-12)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Intel Core 2 Configuration

• Intel Desktop Board D975XBX (Intel 975X Express chipset)
• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, Core 2 Duo E6700 and E6600
• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ X6900 (3.2GHz, 266x12)
• 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4. 4-4-12)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

SYSmark 2004 and Cinebench 2003

The 3GHz Athlon 64 FX-64 is straight up 5% faster than the 2.8GHz FX-62 in SYSmark 2004, but when you compare that with the Intel Core 2, it is still another 5% below the performance of the Core 2 Duo E6600 on overall. The Core 2 Extreme X6900 on the other hand sets another record for the Internet Content Creation workload. However, you might have noticed that it has a lower Office Productivity score than the X6800, which is probably due to the overclocking. When Intel eventually launches the Core 2 Extreme X6900, we'll be more able to verify this anomaly.

In Cinebench 2003, the FX-64 is able to overtake the Core 2 Duo E6600 by around 3% in terms of multi-threaded rendering performance, but still has a ways to catch up to the E6700 and once we look at the Intel Core 2 Extremes, even the 3GHz FX-64 is still around 19% slower than the 2.93GHz X6800 and almost 30% under the X6900. And just like in SYSmark 2004, the projected speed of the Core 2 Extreme X6900 broke new grounds in Cinebench 2003 as it broke the 1K score barrier.

PCMark05 and XMpeg 5.03

PCMark05 shows a more interesting performance breakdown with its subsystem targeted workloads. The Athlon 64 FX-64 also shows 5 - 7% performance increase over the FX-62, which is expected. However, while it manages to catch up to the Core 2 Duo E6600 in terms of memory subsystem performance, the FX-64 is still left behind by the 2.4GHz E660 in the CPU workloads. As such, applications that favor memory performance will probably perform better on the FX-64, but the Core 2 will still dominate CPU intensive tasks.

DivX encoding is another example of a CPU intensive task and as you can see, both the Athlon 64 FX-62 and FX-64 lagging behind, even though the FX-64 manages to shave off 47 seconds from the FX-62. The Core 2 Extreme X6800 can encode the same video more than two minutes faster and the X6900 will probably set a new standard by cutting another solid 32 seconds off the X6800.

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.

Results - Quake 4 and UT2004

In Quake 4, we begin to see a slight leveling off in performance from the Core 2 Extreme X6800 to X6900 whether SMP mode is enabled or not. Our GeForce 7900 GT is probably the limiting factor here as the game becomes GPU restricted. At the lower end of the scale though, the Athlon 64 FX-64 system is able to perform on par with the Core 2 Duo E6600.

The Core 2 Extreme X6900 continues is linear performance increment through higher clock frequencies as UT2004 isn't as graphics bound, adding 7 - 9fps at every speed bump. The game also works well in the favor of the Athlon 64 FX-62 and FX-64 as both processors outperform the Core 2 Duo E6600 and are on the same playing field as the E6700 for the first time.

Closing Remarks

There you have it, our first hand preview of the performance of AMD and Intel's 'upcoming' high-end processors. If you look purely at each CPU, both the Athlon 64 FX-64 and Core 2 Extreme X6900 display the level of performance improvement that is expected out of the increase in core clock speeds; the FX-64 being on average 5 - 7% faster than the FX-62 and the X6900 averaging 6 - 8% over the X6800.

From our benchmarks, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-64 was able to perform very well in gaming benchmarks due to a much better graphics subsystem of the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard, which while not really being indicative of processor performance, does give the Athlon 64 FX-64 a reprieve.

However, even with this improvement, the Athlon 64 FX-64 is merely playing catch up to the lower end Core 2 Duo E6600, while the X6900 increases Intel's lead even further, leaving a huge performance gap for AMD to fill in terms of raw number crunching performance. The Intel Core 2 Extreme X6900 looks like it is going to be an extra nail in the coffin for AMD's 90nm Windsor core.

To date, AMD has almost halved the price of its Athlon 64 processor line-up, but even with the July price cuts, the Processor-In-Box (PIB) version of the Athlon 64 FX-62 will still weigh in at a hefty US$827 and the Athlon 64 FX-64 will probably debut at the usual US$999 mark. This makes AMD's high-end offering not very attractive considering the E6600 is below US$350.

Note that the AMD Athlon 64 FX-64 and Intel Core 2 Extreme X6900 are both not officially announced or released yet. The specifications of both these processors at press time are at best an educated speculation based on the information available to us today. The actual performance of the processors can differ from our benchmarks in this article if AMD or Intel decide to change the specifications or they may even not materialize though we feel that's unlikely.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.