Merom (Core 2 Duo) benchmarks on Z96j

A Z96j with a Core 2 Duo (T7400 @ 2.16 GHz) compared to Z96j with Core Duo (T2600 @ 2.16 GHz) and W2J (T2500 @ 2.00 GHz):
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=276
NOTE: this is not with new bios.

 

interesting benchmarks... I wonder how the upgraded BIOS would affect those scores?

 

I'm not sure...I hope it does. I'm a little worried about battery time (last page) which is significantly less than the Core Duo.

 

Hmmmm. Doesn't seem like there is going to be the huge leap in performance across the board for Merom compared to what Conroe is getting in the desktop arena, at least what MaximumPC just published for the high end C2E x6800 (30+% for CPU-intense tests in most, compared to current high AMD procs).

6% increase in PCMark05 score (8% cpu increase), 5% in 3DM'06 (30% 3DM'05) for cpu with 5% or less in overall score. Some of the benchmarks using floating point or other math-intensive operation appear much better, and it breaks the 1min barrier for superpi, but it looks like some of the "real" world performance (i.e. system performance benchmarks) is showing fairly modest improvements.

Still, Merom is likely to be a great addition to the platform - and makes my (now aging) PM look positively sluggish.

 

Wow that is definitely some news. To me though they are just core 2 duo prototypes and I would imagine that given a few more months, the core 2 duo would show greater improvements.

 

May i ask, what do u base this on? it will be the same processor, and the speed will be the same, the only thing that might realistically differ slightly (with a bios update) is battery life. You will have to wait for the "santa rosa" platform before you see any improvement over the current set up

 

cool. thanks for the posting.
though not that great of an improvement in performance, its bound to improve as the core2duo has potential to bring more power in its later models. But that battery life is a definite problem.

 

The difference in performance improvements between Conroe and Merom can be partly be attributed to the fact that Merom is limited to run at 667MHz bus whereas the desktop variants can use upto 1066/1333MHz.

 

just a quick question i thought that merom is 64 bit ,am i right??

 

It is 64-bit, yes.

Processor won't really do much in the 3DM test. 64 bit really just allows for those numbers to be crunched better. Plus they aren't using a 64bit OS w/64bit apps. So I don't think you can really judge the merom until we add all that into the equation. But hey...i could be wrong

Battery life is a bummer though

 

I think the bios update will make a noticeable improvement to the scores. We put the T7400 into the Z96J and we were seeing problems with the system hanging while shutting off and the system would generate allot of heat due the system not reading the processor correctly.

During one of the last times we shut the system off, the log off screen hung and you could barely keep your hand next to the back vent with the amount of heat that was coming out.

I hope we dont loose to much battery life with the merom.

 

I found exactly the same problems when writing the article. It's obvious there needs to be a BIOS update as power management isn't all there.

The heatpipe was scorching hot when removed from the T7400, but not once did I ever experience any form of instability during my testing. No BSODs or even hangs. Battery Eater Pro ran for over 1 hour loading the GPU and CPU together and the system managed to complete that test.

The Merom appears to be able to tolerate the heat very well, which could imply a superb overclocking laptop CPU.

- Jon.

 

I'd be interested to see if there is any difference in performance between the Stepping 1 Revision A1 and the Stepping 4 Revision B0 ES Meroms.

 

Mr. Hung!

Did you join the forums just to reply to this thread? Hope you stick around for a little while. Welcome to the boards!

 

Thanks for the test results! Have to agree with others about the battery life. Hopefully with the new bios the results would be different.

 

I've been lurking around this forum for a while now, but never posted (or registered) until yesterday. Thanks for the welcome. And yes, I plan on sticking around.

BTW, the article was updated with Cinebench test results. Also, I redid 3Dmark since some people were wondering how there was a 1000pt. gap in 3dmark 05.

Noobified, we're using a B0 ES version, but from experience differences between Engineering Samples and release versions are zero or minimal. So what we're seeing is likely what we're going to get unless Intel does some major changes in a month (unlikely).

- Jon.

 

new bios is out for the s96 possiblity of revised benchmarks?

 

Care to pass me a link?

Thanks!

- Jon.

 

Link to the S96J drivers