Ten Year Anniversary of Core 2 Duo and Conroe

[Sonikku]

Ah, the C2D E6750. That was the one. I spent $200 on that thing and it carried me to Sandy Bridge. I'm still using the Sandy. I've bought two processors over the course of ten years.

 

[JimmiG]

Relevant:

Also, CPUs are not oranges or apples. Or wedding cakes. It's different with CPUs. They have followed Moore's Law for the past several decades, so you can absolutely extrapolate. No matter how you look at it, performance improvements have plateaued. In 1994, I was running a 40 MHz system, by 2004 I was closing on in 3 GHz, with probably several times the IPC as well.

If I could time travel and show the 1994 Me a 2004 system, I would be blown away. If I was shown a 2014 system in 2004, I'd be like "Cool, when is that coming out? Next year or in two years?".

 

[whm1974]

If I could time travel and show the 1994 Me a 2004 system, I would be blown away. If I was shown a 2014 system in 2004, I'd be like "Cool, when is that coming out? Next year or in two years?".

I disagree. The system I have now(built in 2013) is way better then the system I built in 2004.

 

[Sweepr]

Feels like yesterday. AnandTech's conclusion back then:

Compared to AMD's Athlon 64 X2 the situation gets a lot more competitive, but AMD still doesn't stand a chance. The Core 2 Extreme X6800, Core 2 Duo E6700 and E6600 were pretty consistently in the top 3 or 4 spots in each benchmark, with the E6600 offering better performance than AMD's FX-62 flagship in the vast majority of benchmarks. Another way of looking at it is that Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 is effectively a $316 FX-62, which doesn't sound bad at all.

www.anandtech.com/show/2045

 

[StrangerGuy]

Feels like yesterday. AnandTech's conclusion back then:

www.anandtech.com/show/2045

If talking about overclocked even a $186 E6300 demolished the entire A64 lineup considering at stock 1.86GHz it was already matching or beating 2.6GHz X2s in games. The only saving grace for AMD that time after the inevitable CPU price cuts was cheap A64 mobos and DDR1.

 

[PG]

Anybody else remember the great combo deals at Frys? I picked up an E6300 and cheap ECS motherboard for less than what the cpu alone was selling for at Newegg.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1955085

 

[escrow4]

They do hit different markets, but yeah, ultrabooks are becoming very popular. I for one won't buy another laptop much over 3 lbs. In fact, my goal is closer to 2 lbs.

Interestingly, that means no current MacBook Pro meets that criterion, as all of them are 3.5 lbs or more. The MacBook Airs fit the bill at under 3 lbs for a 13", but I don't like the screens on those, so I haven't bought one of those either. Then there is the 12" MacBook which meets the form factor I've been lusting after for years and the screen on it is beautiful, but I don't like its keyboard so much and I would prefer to have more than one USB port. But it's oh so light at 2 lbs. Even with the slower Core M CPU, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it had a higher travel keyboard.

So, I will be waiting for the 2016 revamp of the MacBook Pro 13" and the MacBook 12" version 2. I betcha the MBP 13" will come in at a shade over 3 lbs, not much more than the current MacBook Air. My dilemma will be whether I can stand the much higher weight of the MacBook Pro (even though that weight will likely be only a little over 3 lbs I'm predicting) or if I can stand the low travel keyboard of the MacBook.

BTW, I use my iPad Air 2 more than my laptop, and that thing is less than 1 lb. That is a tough act to follow in terms of weight.

For a laptop to match my 5930K desktop I'd need to spend thousands. I've scrapped laptops. The low end is junk with 720p screens and no SSD and $1500 on an Ultrabook, I'd rather buy a 4G prepaid tablet instead for $250. $1500 is desktop money not laptop money.

 

[VirtualLarry]

For a laptop to match my 5930K desktop I'd need to spend thousands. I've scrapped laptops. The low end is junk with 720p screens and no SSD and $1500 on an Ultrabook, I'd rather buy a 4G prepaid tablet instead for $250. $1500 is desktop money not laptop money.

Would you be doing video encoding and running an FTP server on your laptop too?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Would you be doing video encoding and running an FTP server on your laptop too?

I do it on my work Thinkpad T540p.
Of course it helps that I upped the RAM to 16GB (from 4GB), and swapped out the crappy i3-4000M with an i7-4700MQ

 

[Eug]

It's interesting to peruse the Best Buy website for entry-level desktops in their current back-to-school sale. On the Intel side, they're mostly Pentiums, which provide Core 2 Duo level performance. In fact, some of them are actually significantly slower than my AMD desktop... which incidentally was also a near entry-level desktop, but one that is from 2010. (I bought it on sale a few months after release for an entry-level price, since it had lower mid-end performance and a GPU that did h.264 decode in hardware.) The main difference is the current ones use less power, whereas my AMD is a power hog (95 Watt CPU).

OTOH, there are a few quad-core Pentiums now too (4 threads), whereas they pretty much didn't exist on the Intel side back then. The quad-cores back then were AMD, but again, usually not on the entry-level machines.

As mentioned, the big difference now is that they are way less power, like for example, this one.

http://ark.intel.com/products/91532/Intel-Pentium-Processor-J3710-2M-Cache-up-to-2_64-GHz

But the performance ain't great either. I guess it's really an Atom. Die-shrunk BayTrail but now marketed as Pentium, since Atom has a bad reputation for desktop performance (and deservedly so).

Really it seems the big benefit for CPU performance for the mainstream entry level is on the mobile side, because Intel has decided that this Pentium level of performance (which was easily achievable back in 2010 with mid-range chips) is good enough for the mainstream entry level, and would rather focus on other things than absolute performance in this price category.

 

[Raduque]

They do hit different markets, but yeah, ultrabooks are becoming very popular. I for one won't buy another laptop much over 3 lbs. In fact, my goal is closer to 2 lbs.

Interestingly, that means no current MacBook Pro meets that criterion, as all of them are 3.5 lbs or more. The MacBook Airs fit the bill at under 3 lbs for a 13", but I don't like the screens on those, so I haven't bought one of those either. Then there is the 12" MacBook which meets the form factor I've been lusting after for years and the screen on it is beautiful, but I don't like its keyboard so much and I would prefer to have more than one USB port. But it's oh so light at 2 lbs. Even with the slower Core M CPU, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it had a higher travel keyboard.

So, I will be waiting for the 2016 revamp of the MacBook Pro 13" and the MacBook 12" version 2. I betcha the MBP 13" will come in at a shade over 3 lbs, not much more than the current MacBook Air. My dilemma will be whether I can stand the much higher weight of the MacBook Pro (even though that weight will likely be only a little over 3 lbs I'm predicting) or if I can stand the low travel keyboard of the MacBook.

BTW, I use my iPad Air 2 more than my laptop, and that thing is less than 1 lb. That is a tough act to follow in terms of weight.

Have you looked at the HP Spectre 13? It's 2.45lb and 10mm thick. It's beautiful in person. http://store.hp.com/us/en/ContentVi...cons/nextgen/premiumlaptops/shopspectrelaptop

Way better looking than MacBooks, IMO.

Ah, the C2D E6750. That was the one. I spent $200 on that thing and it carried me to Sandy Bridge. I'm still using the Sandy. I've bought two processors over the course of ten years.

I bought an E6300 Conroe in late 2006 and overclocked it to 2.86ghz and used it till 2013. I paired it with an HD3000 (can't remember if it was a 3850 or 3570) and when that died a GTX460 768mb. It was starting to show it's age by then and I bought a laptop with an i5-4200u and GT730m.

 

[Eug]

Have you looked at the HP Spectre 13? It's 2.45lb and 10mm thick. It's beautiful in person. http://store.hp.com/us/en/ContentVi...cons/nextgen/premiumlaptops/shopspectrelaptop

Way better looking than MacBooks, IMO.

I generally own two laptops and two desktops. One of each for Windows and macOS. (Well more than two, but I'll ignore that for the time being.)

My next Windows laptop will definitely be an ultrabook. But it likely won't be in 2016 or 2017. That will likely be a MacBook first, then I'll get a Windows laptop after that. Partially because I end up getting two of each, my purchases on each platform are typically further spread apart than other people's.

That said, I usually go lower end on the Windows side, because I usually prefer using macOS. However, I will have to evaluate what's out there and cost. I'm a little more willing to spend a bit more these days since I can expense part of it through my business.

 

[jpiniero]

It's interesting to peruse the Best Buy website for entry-level desktops in their current back-to-school sale. On the Intel side, they're mostly Pentiums, which provide Core 2 Duo level performance.

I dunno, if you just regularly go to the laptops section, the top result is a Dell with an Broadwell-U i3 for $329; and there's also an HP with the A10-9600P for $40 more.

 

[Eug]

I dunno, if you just regularly go to the laptops section, the top result is a Dell with an Broadwell-U i3 for $329; and there's also an HP with the A10-9600P for $40 more.

Sure, you can find a lot of Core i3 desktops too for not too much money, but I find it curious that more of them are Pentiums, with many of them being Atom derived Pentiums, that are the same performance level as Core 2 Duo from like 8 years ago.

This just supports what I've been saying for years, which is that Core 2 Duo is all that most (but not all) non-gamers need in terms of performance. Core 2 Duo was the great equalizer. The fact that Intel now markets Atom derived chips as Pentium further supports this. They do this because they can get away with it, whereas in the past people wouldn't accept it, because Atom was noticeably slower, so much so that even basic usage suffered greatly.

A decade or so ago, entry level just machines didn't feel as generally usable. Similarly, even basic stuff felt slow on them, but nowadays you have people like me who are OK using higher clocked Core 2 Duo level machines (which could arguably be Core i3 level) for most business applications, which means that average users are satisfied with even less.

To put it another way, back in the 1980s I used to say if you wanted a decent machine for basic use you probably had to spend $3000 CAD. Then in the 1990s, maybe $2000-2500 CAD. Then in the early 2000s $1500+. Then later in the 2000s just $1000+. Nowadays you can get away with well under $1000 including SSD and monitor.

 

[Genx87]

E6600 is still doing work as an OpenNAS box. It was also my first Intel chip since the Celeron A@450 in I think 1999? I havent been back to AMD since.

 

[escrow4]

Would you be doing video encoding and running an FTP server on your laptop too?

If I spent near $2K for a proper laptop with a decent screen, a fat SSD, a secondary HDD and a faster i7 (not the U), damn right. Which I won't as a 2K desktop would obliterate such a laptop. If I'm not on this desktop I fall back to tablets. Laptops were useful 6 years ago, now not so much. I do have an N2800 serving up media 24/7 which works well but that is all its good for.

 

[wpcoe]

My sister still uses an old (non OC'd) e6750 for web browsing, e-mail and watching video. With an SSD and 4GB RAM, it still seems snappy to me.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Takes me down memory lane. I couldn't afford a new Intel platform and just upgraded my Athlon 64 3200+ to the X2 4400+. Went all out on that build. Even sleeved all my wiring, including the PSU.

Found my old write up (on another site) of my build. Here's a pic of the beast. Loved that box! I have that processor sitting on my desktop to this day. Memories! :whiste:

It's like the 90s of clothing... so colorful. I still have a Q6600 box that's similar. Blue motherboard, green GPU, copper heat sinks, multi-colored neon connectors, etc. It can still run 3.51ghz stable too. Used to be able to do 3.6ghz which was amazing for a Q6600, but it's no longer the young energetic chip it used to be.

 

[exar333]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10525...onroe-moores-law-is-dead-long-live-moores-law

Wow, 10 years. Crazy that there's been so little progress since then:

Not even a doubling in single-thread performance in 10 years, and only a 4-fold improvement in multithreaded. For comparison, 10 years before Conroe, we were still at 200MHz Pentium Pro- imagine if the last 10 years had seen as much improvement as the 10 before!

Look at a phone, tablet or ultrabook from now vs. 10 years ago.

Yeah...

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's like the 90s of clothing... so colorful. I still have a Q6600 box that's similar. Blue motherboard, green GPU, copper heat sinks, multi-colored neon connectors, etc. It can still run 3.51ghz stable too. Used to be able to do 3.6ghz which was amazing for a Q6600, but it's no longer the young energetic chip it used to be.

A Q6600 was amazing back in the day. You touched a peak that stock chips didn't touch for years.

Legendary OCing CPUs:

-Celeron 300A
-Q6600
-2500k

 

[Eug]

A Q6600 was amazing back in the day. You touched a peak that stock chips didn't touch for years.

Legendary OCing CPUs:

-Celeron 300A
-Q6600
-2500k

I had a Celeron 366. Although not as consistently as the 300@450, some of those things could hit 550 MHz (although I didn't do that). Even better though is that I used that same Asus P2B mobo all the way up to 1.4 GHz stock with a Celeron Tualatin.

 

[ElFenix]

my first core based processor was one of those pentium E21(x)0s. if i'd have known what an overclocker it probably was my opteron 165 would have been relegated.

Energy = $$$$$

that reminds me, i need to switch my electric middleman today

 

[StrangerGuy]

Look at a phone, tablet or ultrabook from now vs. 10 years ago.

Yeah...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k

Stop making sense man, stock Skylake 6500 has like ~60% more IPC, +200% perf/watt than OC 4.6GHz 2500K in real world game testing and beating it every single time to the tune of 15% when CPU bottlenecked, no progress in last 5 years either. *snicker*

 

[bigboxes]

It's like the 90s of clothing... so colorful. I still have a Q6600 box that's similar. Blue motherboard, green GPU, copper heat sinks, multi-colored neon connectors, etc. It can still run 3.51ghz stable too. Used to be able to do 3.6ghz which was amazing for a Q6600, but it's no longer the young energetic chip it used to be.

TBH, stock wouldn't have looked so purdy. That was my last Abit board that I purchased.

I remember building a Q6600 rig for a customer back in 2008 and shipping it off to Portland. Was my first time with a quad-core processor and DDR2 ram. Used a Thermalright TRUE monster of a heatsink along with Noctua fans. The customer had me put a 8800GT in that puppy. He called it Kobe. I made sure to put Dirk on his desktop as a surprise when he first fired it up. D:

I went to the dark side in 2009 and build an even better box for myself replacing the X2 4400+ with an i7 920. It would be cool if AMD can become competitive with Zen. I won't hold my breath.

 

[CHADBOGA]

If talking about overclocked even a $186 E6300 demolished the entire A64 lineup considering at stock 1.86GHz it was already matching or beating 2.6GHz X2s in games. The only saving grace for AMD that time after the inevitable CPU price cuts was cheap A64 mobos and DDR1.

There was a funny fellow on various forums who was so discombobulated by the Core 2 range, that he was vigorously stating that he felt the $186 Core 2 was responsible for the Global Financial Crisis which occurred in 2008/9.