Submitted by “For months now, all we really knew about the new Core 2 Duo mobile processor was its code name: Merom. Given the blazing speeds that the desktop Core 2 Duo processors exhibited, we could only imagine what was in store for laptops. Now, Intel completes the architectural upgrade of all its processors with the release of its mobile Core 2 Duo mobile. And we tell you if it was worth the wait.”
There is an article from anandtech (august 3rd) with an interesting comparison between yonah and merom.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2808&p=1
Conroe is certainly a big step forward for current netburst users, but merom (64bit computing apart) is just a bit faster than yonah
I want to know if running the core 2 duo under 64bit helps performance or hinders it. With netburst running emt64 it would degrade performance in a lot of cases (because 64bit support was just tacked on). With athlon 64s it helps performance.
A lot of people just think 64bit support means been able to have more memory than 4GB. A big feature that’s often over looked is that amd64/emt64 have 16 registers from the 8 in x86, which can enhance performance.
What upset me so much about that PC Mag review is that it’s actually comparing a 2.16Ghz Core Duo chip to a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo chip which is an 8% gain that is only noted on the 2nd page and otherwise never mentioned again. You see the charts and think there is a huge difference but there isn’t, more here:
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2006/08/29/choosing-a-core-duo-or-co…
They said the systems all ran pretty hot. Hotter than ordinary Core Duo?
With only slight CPU/Battery gains. Heat could be the deciding issue. Core Duo laptops aren’t exactly cool, they wouldn’t want to get any hotter. Yet they sort of hinted at that being the case?
Perhaps this other PCMag article, which was published the next day, explains better the difference between Merom and Core Duo. They have charts comparing SYSmark 2004 SE, PC gaming, and power usage. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2009197,00.asp
Those are the same charts as in the ExtremeTech review, and are misleading because if you don’t read the article carefully you miss the fact that the Merom chip they tested with is 2.33ghz and the Yonah one they used is 2.16ghz. They should have used chips of equal clock rate for a more accurate comparison.
Bingo
It’s hotter than core duo. Something to think about for ‘no it’s not a laptop, it’s a notebook’ mac users.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2009200,00.asp