PERFORMANCE This is the category
that should matter most to a Maximum
PC reader, and there are no surprises here: The Core
2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest CPU in town, the state,
and the whole freaking world right now. Not that the
Athlon FX-62 is a bad chip, it’s just slower than Core 2.
Pit it against a Pentium 4 and it delivers the same kind of
smackdown that it gets from the new Core 2 Extreme.
The Core 2 Extreme X6800’s performance advantage
is so shocking, you’ll have to turn the page to see the
benchmark results for yourself. WINNER: CORE 2
EXTREME PRICE The two
procs are priced
almost identically,
with the Athlon 64
FX-62 running
$1,030 and the Core
2 Extreme X
hitting $1,000. But
when you factor in the
superior performance
of the C2E, you’d
be a fool to spend
your CPU bucks on
anything but Intel.
WINNER: CORE 2
EXTREMEINTEL CORE 2
EXTREME X
$1,000, http://www.intel.comhead 2 head TWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES
THERMALS Intel’s big
breakthrough with Conroe
is in thermal profiles. The
dual-core Pentium D and
Pentium Extreme Editions
ran hotter than pocket fusion
reactors, but Core 2 Duo and
Core 2 Extreme are exactly
the opposite. Although our
own testing finds that C2D
and C2E aren’t quite as cool
running as we initially hoped,
the chip is fully capable of
running hours on end under
full load with the heatsink fan
unplugged. The Athlon 64
FX-62 is a fairly cool-running
proc too, but we’d be afraid
to run it without the heatsink
fan turned on.
On paper, the Core 2
Extreme X6800 is a 75W
CPU while the Athlon 64 FX-
62 is 125W chip. The caveat
is that both companies rate
their thermals differently.
Intel’s rating tends to reflect
performance in the real-
world, while AMD’s describes
the worst-case scenario.
Still, our hands-on experi-
ence suggests that the Core
2 Extreme X6800 is more
immune to heat. WINNER:
CORE 2 EXTREMEround^3
round^4
round^5
OCTOBER 2006 MAXIMUMPC 17
SPECS
ATHLON 64 FX-62 CORE 2 EXTREME X
CLOCK / CORES 2.8GHz dual core 2.93GHz dual core
SOCKET AM2 LGA
MEMORY SUPPORT DDR2/800 Chipset dependent
L1 SIZE 128KB 64KB
L2 SIZE 2MB per core 4MB shared
TRANSISTOR COUNT 227.4 million 291 million
DIE SIZE 230mm^2 143mm^2
THERMAL DESIGN POWER* 125 watts 75 watts
PROCESS 90nm DSC SOI 65nm
CORE CODE-NAME Windsor Conroe
PRICE AT LAUNCH (PER 1,000) $1,030 $1,*AMD and Intel use different methods to determine TDP ratings.