| Intel Clovertown Quad Core Processor Review |
| Written by WoobiaEroveva | ||||||||
As can be seen in the CPUz screenshot, the processor has 4 Cores and 2 x 4 MB of L2 Cache per CPU just like Kentsfield. Infact, bar the different sockets and the ability to use 2 of these CPUs together, little differentiates it from Kentsfield.
To see just how Clovertown compared to Core 2 Duo and Kentsfield CPUs, we decided to run a series of tests. Read on to find out how it faired. Testbed and Testing MethodologyWe used 3 different CPUs in total, 2 motherboards and 2 sets of RAM. Apart from that, our testbed was the same throughout. Here are the details of our setup:Intel Core 2 Duo Setup
Intel Kentsfield Setup
Intel Clovertown Setup
Common Hardware
We'd like to mention that Intel didn't send us any engineering samples and that we obtained them through independent means. We decided to run the following benchmarks on each setup: Synthetic Benchmarks SiSoft SANDRA CPU Arithmetic and Multimedia Benchmarks SANDRA's CPU arithmetic and multimedia benchmarks are a good way to compare the general performance of a variety of processors. 3D Mark 06 (CPU Score) The CPU test in 3D Mark 06 is very useful in providing information on how you will fair in games that are significantly dependant on processor performance. Real-World Tests MP3 Encoding In today’s digital age, practically everyone owns an MP3 player. MP3 encoding is a fairly CPU intensive task and is benefited hugely by a faster processor. To do our test, we ripped Moby - Play from the original CD to MP3 files using Windows Media Player 10. We timed how long it took on each system using a stopwatch. Archiving/File Compression It's fairly common these days for us to compress files and folders to share or use for backup purposes. Like MP3 encoding, this is a CPU intensive task. We archived a base folder containing MP3s with a size of 280 MB into a .rar file using WinRAR 3.6. Again, the process was timed on each rig using a stopwatch. Gaming Tests Quake 4 and Unreal tournament 2004 To compare how the different rigs would compare in games, we ran time demos in Quake 4 and Unreal tournament 2004 and recorded the number of frames per second in each case. The settings used were: Quake 4 (v 1.2, dual-core patch)
Unreal Tournament 2004
ResultsSynthetic Benchmarks 
 
Real World Tests
Gaming Tests
ConclusionBeing used to my humble Core 2 Duo E6300 rig, I was amazed at how responsive our Clovertown setup was, especially during multitasking. No matter how much load was put on the processor, you could feel it effortlessly glide through any application.In benchmarks, the performance difference between the Clovertown CPUs and the lesser E6700 at the same speeds ranged from 300% to 0%. Synthetic benchmarks faired better, especially the SiSoft CPU arithmetic and multimedia benchmarks, however as far as real world performance goes, only archiving saw a notable improvement. Video encoding and 3D apps would no doubt see large improvements. Photoshop was sublime in use. For gamers, there's little if any reason to go quad core let alone octal core. Unfortunately, most real world software applications don't even make use of 2 cores let alone 8. Whilst there's no denying that Clovertown is very impressive, the benefit to most enthusiasts would be lost as most applications still can't take advantage of the extra power of multiple core systems. Whilst progress is being made in this aspect, notably upcoming games and HDCP in Windows Vista, it'll be quite some time before mainstream users look towards this kind of technology.
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