# Intel Core 2 Duo

## xlp

Hello Guys

After some time I thought about buying a new PC. I've been using AMD since they were on the market. But now after reading some articles about the new Intel processors, I was just thinking about a change. 

Which processor is, in your opinion, the better choice for a gentoo box? The AMD 64 X2 or one of the Intel Core 2 Duo, and which chipset do I choose (is there a big choice?) 

I'm most thinking about the software that supports the processor like SMP and stuff. In this case I prefer ease of use and stability over raw power. 

Thanks in advance for you tips and opinions.

Greets Timo

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## Keruskerfuerst

Intel Core Duo 6600 and a P965 chipset based mainboard.

or

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4600 and a Nvidia (570 or 590) or ATI Express 3200 based mainboard.

With applications, that run on both cores, the Intel processors are about 5% faster than the comparable AMD ones.

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## Paapaa

I think Intel E6600 should be compared to AMD X2 5000+ or FX-62. In some tests even E6400 is faster than FX-62 and in some tests AMD wins. Here is a comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=8

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/14/core2_duo_knocks_out_athlon_64/page13.html

Here are results from E6300 and E6400 with stock speed and overclocked:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=4

It also seems that AMD draws less power when idle but Intel draws less when at full load.

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## Zygfryd

E6600 is a lot faster than X2 4600+, E6400 is the comparable model and it's still faster in 23 of 26 benchmarks in a suite. At least in 32-bit mode.

I got an E6400 on i965p (gigabyte mobo) recently and since I managed to install the system, it's been very stable, though it only received limited testing (ran a couple minutes of Glest, Tremulous, Googleearth, besides hours of compilation of course). There's sound with ALSA, the integrated NIC works with the sky2 driver.

There are quirks though:

- Both Asus and Gigabyte integrate a JMicron controller for IDE, it's not properly supported until 2.6.18-rc1; you will either need a livecd with that kernel (ie. Ark Linux Live, unstable, but working) or boot from USB.

- The integrated NIC makes an awful high-pitched sound, but I might simply have a faulty unit.

- Neither ACPI nor lm_sensors detect any fans or thermometers, although they're there (BIOS and Windows sees them).

PS. OpenOffice compiled in 4 hours 43 minutes. Now that's an improvement over my old Athlon XP 1700+ with 10+ hours.

EDIT: Scratch the 2.6.18 idea, it works if you add "all-generic-ide" to your kernel arguments.

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## xlp

so, as far as I understood thir right, there is no issue in using an intel 64 bit processor although all the guides refer to amd?

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## fangorn

You have to avoid building the kernel for athlon64 and the -march in /etc/make.conf will have to be nocona instead of athlon64 IIRC.

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## batistuta

maybe not a direct answer to your question. But I'm personally waiting for AMD chips supporting pacifica. This is very cool if you wanna run virtual machines in your box, and pacifica will have a much better performance than Intel's VT. So if virtualization is important for you, this might be a factor. 5% improvement, as it was claimed above, is neglegible and you should look at other factors such us:

- price

- gut feeling (I don't like intel that much)

- quality of compatible motherboards

- power consumption

- trouble (i.e. what is better supported by Gentoo or other OSes when compiling, what breaks less)

- etc etc.

A 5%, even 10% improvement is really nothing. Also keep in mind that more bottlenecks are memory or HD. So get lots of RAM, and a fast HD, possibly a RAID-0 configuration. This will have a more noticible impact.

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## xlp

 *Quote:*   

> - trouble (i.e. what is better supported by Gentoo or other OSes when compiling, what breaks less)

 

This is what exactly was in my mind as I started this thread. I don't care about the last 5 %. For some reason (those that are only obvious to other geeks) I want to have a 64 bit dual processor machine running gentoo linux. But which of those two will be more "friendly" to maintain, or even to install. 

For the gut feeling: I'm a german and always prefer firms that employ people where I live (this means: AMD). 

But I am really curious about the support for Intel processors after so much work was done with the AMD64 Project.

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## Paapaa

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> 5% improvement, as it was claimed above, is neglegible and you should look at other factors such us:

 

5% difference is small, but the difference between E6600 and X2 5000+ can be anything from 5% - 50% depending on the benchmark (also in real applications). 20% can be significant in some cases: long compiles, long renderings etc, even frames/s.

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> - price

 

Not just price but price/performance and price/power_usage and price/features.

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> - gut feeling (I don't like intel that much)

 

I can see that but can't understand it. I also have an AMD system (XP3200+) but the decision should NOT be done based on gut (fanboy) feeling. You get better results by looking at price and technical merits, not by feeling. Now Intel has the best high-end processors so it really looks tempting. After 6 months the situation might be different, of course. IMO AMD should be cheaper to make it look more competitive.

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## Computator

 *Zygfryd wrote:*   

> EDIT: Scratch the 2.6.18 idea, it works if you add "all-generic-ide" to your kernel arguments.

 

Just to be sure: you mean with the normal amd64 livecd?

And thanks for the information. I've been thinking of buying a Conroe with a Gigabyte board and I'm a bit more confident that I'll get it to work now. One more question: your sig says 2GB RAM, but could you tell me more precisely what RAM you have? I've read there were some problems with low-latency/high-speed modules that require 2.0V or more. Guess I should be pretty safe with Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 (CL5), though.

Ontopic:

Most hardware for AMD processors is not that knew and will be supported by now. Motherboards with the new Intel chipset might have some problems with kernel support or memory compatibility, but most people owning a Core 2 Duo system right now seem to be happy with it and the C2D is of course better than an X2 (althouhg the latter is not at all a bad processor). So AMD looks a bit safer, but the C2D should be more fun.

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## Zygfryd

 *Computator wrote:*   

> Just to be sure: you mean with the normal amd64 livecd?

 

I meant the normal x86 livecd.

 *Computator wrote:*   

> And thanks for the information. I've been thinking of buying a Conroe with a Gigabyte board and I'm a bit more confident that I'll get it to work now. One more question: your sig says 2GB RAM, but could you tell me more precisely what RAM you have? I've read there were some problems with low-latency/high-speed modules that require 2.0V or more. Guess I should be pretty safe with Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 (CL5), though.

 

I have two GeiL 1GB 800MHz CL5 sticks. Benchmarks showed a small difference between cheap and expensive memories, much lower than the price gap.

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> But I'm personally waiting for AMD chips supporting pacifica. This is very cool if you wanna run virtual machines in your box, and pacifica will have a much better performance than Intel's VT.

 

AFAIK, all AM2 Athlons have Pacifica already. Both Intel's and AMD's current virtualization technologies are crap, because they don't support virtualized DMA transfers (which is needed for example to expose a graphics card to the VM) on desktop systems. 2007 should bring us some more useful virtualization technologies (ie. Intel's VT-d).

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## netjunkie

I have a core duo notebook, with 1600 processor....in my kernel what should i compile under?

I get kernel panic when i boot, but also note the install is in VMWARE on windows.

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## fangorn

AFAIK the core duo does not have 64bit extensions. So the only option is x86. Optimization is not a good advice for vmware virtual machines, as you will get problems if you move the installation to a real machine. If any at all compile for Pentium or Pentium-M.

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## batistuta

 *Paapaa wrote:*   

> I can see that but can't understand it. I also have an AMD system (XP3200+) but the decision should NOT be done based on gut (fanboy) feeling

 

Yes, it can. If you can buy things so objectively, I'm happy for you. But after being screwed by some companies more than once, I don't care anymore about their technology, because that is just one factor in buying a product. For example, I swear I won't ever buy anything from Sony again. I know they have good technology, but they've screwed me badly three times, and millions of other people as well. So what I meant is not that the packaging color is not nice, but rather, whether for some reason you don't like the company (I'm not talking about the product). And I think this argument is in particular valid if the performance gain is 5%. It's not like we are talking about 50% diference.

Price/performance ratio is a good measure value *if* you need the extra performance *and* if you have the money. That's why I didn't say that these are more important factors, I've just suggested to look at them as well.

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## zuluxxx

 *fangorn wrote:*   

> AFAIK the core duo does not have 64bit extensions. So the only option is x86. Optimization is not a good advice for vmware virtual machines, as you will get problems if you move the installation to a real machine. If any at all compile for Pentium or Pentium-M.

 

They do

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## Paapaa

 *zuluxxx wrote:*   

>  *fangorn wrote:*   AFAIK the core duo does not have 64bit extensions. So the only option is x86. Optimization is not a good advice for vmware virtual machines, as you will get problems if you move the installation to a real machine. If any at all compile for Pentium or Pentium-M. 
> 
> They do

 

No they don't. Only Core 2 duos have EM64T. Core duo != Core 2 duo.

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