Conclusion
The multi-threaded 3DMark06 shows an improvement with Penryn, as well. The increase, other than FSB and clock, is influenced by the CPU's cache levels.
Half-Life 2 has always been a system-bound test when using a decent graphics card. Penryn's collection of additional technologies boosts performance again, mainly via the floating-point enhancements. This metric isn't, perhaps, the most illuminating. Who plays at 1024x768 with a GeForce 8800GTX
Thoughts
The thoughts to take away from this brief look at Penryn performance is that it's more than just a process shrink. The collection of additional tech, ranging from Super Shuffle to Radix-16, offer real performance gains in the right environment.We appreciate that Intel has engineered this benchmarking session to fully exploit the new Core microarchitecture's advancements, thus providing a best-case scenario, but we feel that Penryn - be it in Wolfdale (dual-core) or Yorkfield (quad-core) guise - is a worthwhile advancement on an already-decent processor, especially as Intel has kept the same form factor and thermal envelope intact.
The real question is, we suppose, how well will AMD's Barcelona perform in comparison. We now know Penryn's potential, but AMD keeps us guessing.
