Xtreview Forum

First of all, if you are going to have a website, I believe it to be quite necessary to at least sound a little bit literate by proof reading your commentaries!  I was turning to you as a source for information that you may have come up with regarding the Conroe vs. the Athlon and came to wonder during this article if the author of the article had any credibility based on the literacy alone.

Secondly, I find it quite off base to do a review between to competing processors only to see they have been mismatched from the start.  If you had compared the Athlon 5600 or 5800 in this article, that would have been more understandable.  More than this, there are many other applications and combinations of uses of programs where "real world" testing  of  processors can be measured (via real world use).

I use Steinberg Cubase SL3 for Audio Production (creating and mixing music in a studio) and was appalled at how poor my Conroe e6600 performs next to my AMD Athlon 5600.  There was no comparison.  I use each of these two PC's simultaneously and both PC's are loaded with identical hardware and software.  The only difference is the AMD is on a Biostar NVIDIA 4 ULTRA motherboard (a ?budget board?) and the Intel is on a Gigabyte DS3 motherboard.

I loaded as many VST plugins as I could in each until the Conroe went bust - that's right, it failed with the exact same VST Plugins loaded in the AMD while the AMD was running smooth.  Cubase has a CPU usage meter that tells the amount of usage that the CPU reports to Cubase.  With identical VST plugins installed, Conroe froze and graphics stuttered while reporting in just 70% usage.  I double-checked my latency settings that reduce time for audio to process when set at lower times.  Knowing this increases load on the CPU having latency down, I checked the AMD - both latency settings were the same.  I started checking EVERY detail and control condition - settings in MSCONFIG, settings in SYSTEM-> ADVANCED SETTINGS menu, etc...  all were the same.  Then I looked at the CPU meter in Cubase of the AMD system - it was reporting in at 35% usage.  In disbelief, I kept loading more and more plugins and flipping menus.  I then zoomed in and out the audio tracks while starting and stopping playback of tens of audio tracks and everything was as smooth as could be.  To date, after MONTHS of testing and use, the results are the same.  The AMD Windsor 5600 simply SPANKS the Conroe e6600.  The AMD performs exactly 50% more efficiently and without shutdowns and stuttering.  What is more is that the AMD runs at 12 degrees Celsius below what the Conroe ran.

AMD 90 nm vs. INTEL 65 nm, AMD 1x1 cache vs. INTEL 2x2 cache means?? ???SQUAT?.   Sysandra test scores and all the other paper studies mean ?SQUAT?.  I needed processing power and I got it with the AMD ATHLON X2 5600 ? IT WAS THE WINDSOR NOT THE CONROE that did all the work here.  I am sorry I read all the hype and wasted my money on the Conroe that cost me $300 more including price of the motherboard.

What is really surprising is the difference in reputation of the motherboards I use.  I chose a budget Biostar board for the AMD and a Gigabyte for the Intel.  The Gigabyte is undoubtedly established as the higher performance board and I chose the Biostar for stability of performance, not speed.  I have had great luck with Biostar and have read some info from a 20-year veteran of PC building who swears by reliability and long-term life of Biostar boards versus ASUS and others.  I use mine for Audio Recording which cannot allow one single hiccup in its performance or time is wasted re-recording and mixing due to noises from poor performance of chipsets and stutters from CPU?s.  In the audio industry, stable components are a must.  Personally, I find ASUS, MSI, and other Board manufacturers to be very unreliable as well as other manufacturers that so many gamers lover to watch fail so they can play around and waste their time tweaking them - NOT allowed in the audio industry where MAC dominates due to extreme reliability.  However, I have faith some PC Parts manufacturers can leave a MAC hanging in the dust.  My AMD/Biostar is one PC combo that has just proven to me to be able to do just that.

I wonder now ? what will happen to MAC now that they made the mistake of turning to Intel for their chipsets?  I know Intel is reliable, and there is no doubt, they are about quality.  But the speed and performance hype lately over the Core2Duo is just killing me ? it just is NOT accurate.  In fact, given my instance, it is all a FAT MARKETING LIE.

AMD is certainly the choice for the audio industry.

First , this writer do not write any more review @ Xtreview.com .

Q-A-It is not right to test the latest conroe CPU with a 5000+ only , we should use at least an fx 62 .but this is not the subject of this review .we want to show how much game gain from current CPU power.


Q-how poor my Conroe e6600 performs next to my AMD Athlon 5600

A- Generally conroe perform better than Athlon 64 , there is some application where AMD still leader but those are only few one .
- the Windsor 2.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 (5600+) is one of the best AMD cpu available , in addition its faster by 3-5% then its analog made on 65 nm.
-there should some software or os issue (even Bios issue is possible) , since we tested Steinberg Cubase SL3 for Audio Production with 5600+ and E6600 , we found the E6600 faster ...

Q- What is really surprising is the difference in reputation of the motherboards I use .

A- Agree, many mainboards producer like asus or gigabyte are not better than other producer like Biostar or ECS . But  if we talk about overclock Generally low end mainboards do not show good result due to lack of voltage , setting or cooling .So u are fine with stock setting .

Here is another review  : CPU CHART INTEL CONROE VS A64 (http://xtreview.com/review151.htm).
Hope it give better idea.

I found that rambling post kind of interesting, because I use Cubase SX on an Asus board, which is a more modest setup.

I've been having more problems lately with several instances of the more recent VST instruments causing sluggish response. I suppose that's because they're more complex and tax the CPU more.