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Wolfdale versus Core 2 Duo

Published on 19th April 2007 by Richard Swinburne

Those sneaky Wolfs will come and take your monies, for you will want to upgrade!

Although it's a hectic life being an IDF hack, shooting from keynote to workshop to face-to-face, I managed to find ten minutes (literally) to catch up with the extremely helpful Intel Digital Home Engineer, Jeremy Saldate, who kindly showed off a demo of Core 2 Duo versus Wolfdale.

All this talk of quad-core Penryn at 45nm and it's easy to forget its dual-core companion, Wolfdale. It is made using the same 45nm process with the associated optimisations, but only has a 6MB cache (rather than 12MB) and a single dual-core die (rather than the twin dual-core die to create quad-core).

It also has a lower thermal envelope which should allow for much better overclockability compared to Penryn.

Jeremy showed off a real world automated run of the latest Adobe Première Pro optimised for SSE4. Obviously, this gives the Wolfdale a distinct advantage, having the software capable of utilising the new instructions. This is also a carefully selected situation but it's still impressive nonetheless.

The program rendered the video at 14.44 fps on the new Wolfdale dual core CPU, but could only manage 9.77 fps on the current generation Core 2 Duo.

Are you reaching for your wallet already? Or do you feel the need to wait until bit-tech gets a-hold of one to really see if it's worth your cash? Let us know in the forums.

10 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

Mankz 19th April 2007, 08:58

Wolfdale is looking very nice.

Its Socket 775 I guess, with DDR2 or what?

chrisuk 19th April 2007, 10:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mankz_91
Wolfdale is looking very nice.

Its Socket 775 I guess, with DDR2 or what?

From what I remember they are pin compatible with Core 2 Duo, so all that should be needed is a BIOS update.....I could be totally off mind you!

There looking pretty good though, will def have to consider when I finally decide to part with my hard earned cash for a new rig.

mclean007 19th April 2007, 10:28

Yes, socket 775 with DDR2. They should be compatible with current chipsets, subject to BIOS updates.

Were the processors in this demo identically clocked, or was the Wolfdale clocked higer and/or on a 1333 FSB with the Conroe on 1066?

Tim S 19th April 2007, 11:53

They'll also be supported by Bearlake, too.

Dr. Strangelove 19th April 2007, 14:20

Quote:

Or do you feel the need to wait until bit-tech gets a-hold of one to really see if it's worth your cash?

How can you even ask such a silly question?? Naturally we want you to get a few into your hardware testing dungeon, and test it till it sweats :D

DXR_13KE 19th April 2007, 15:06

after you guys test it i will see if i buy it or not.

JaredC01 19th April 2007, 21:47

After the new AMD's come out to compete with the new intel, at that point I will decide which processor to buy... :)

wafflesomd 20th April 2007, 00:58

Here's useful thought.

Lets start actually writing software that actually takes use of multiple cores!

Sheesh, almost nothing, is multi threaded yet.

Dr. Strangelove 20th April 2007, 11:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by wafflesomd
Here's useful thought.

Lets start actually writing software that actually takes use of multiple cores!

Sheesh, almost nothing, is multi threaded yet.

careful that's a big nono, Intel and AMD sure don't want us to figure that one out cause then why would we buy the 16 cores slapped in one package deal CPU?

You are naturally completely correct, I would say dual core (or dual CPU) is great (yeah you can alt-tab out of games without having to wait 5min), 4+ cores who needs them? (apart from specific server programs made to use multiple cores)

mclean007 20th April 2007, 13:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove
careful that's a big nono, Intel and AMD sure don't want us to figure that one out cause then why would we buy the 16 cores slapped in one package deal CPU?

You are naturally completely correct, I would say dual core (or dual CPU) is great (yeah you can alt-tab out of games without having to wait 5min), 4+ cores who needs them? (apart from specific server programs made to use multiple cores)

Agreed, quad core has very little application on a consumer desktop at this stage. Yeah you may be able to encode Xvid, run a virus scan, run a Photoshop batch conversion and play SupCom all at the same time, but who really does that? Until games like Alan Wake, that really take advantage of multicore, come out, dual core is ample for 99% of home users and quads should stay where they belong - workstation and server rigs.