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Eug · Sep 11, 2006, 09:29 AM

Apple has begun OFFICIALLY publishing SPEC results (again) now. The only ones available as yet are for the older Core Duo 2.0 iMac (OS X with Intel compilers) however:

SPECint2006: 10.1 <-- Same as Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6 GHz with Linux/gcc.
SPECfp2006: 8.88

Also, for SPEC2000, Apple says:

Eriamjh · Sep 11, 2006, 12:16 PM

Discounting the clock speed (meaning normalize for clock speed then calculate the difference), the Core 2 Duo is only 29% faster for SPECint and only 17% faster for SPECfp. Not nearly as impressive.

Eug · Sep 11, 2006, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

Discounting the clock speed (meaning normalize for clock speed then calculate the difference), the Core 2 Duo is only 29% faster for SPECint and only 17% faster for SPECfp. Not nearly as impressive.

Well, I'm assuming the clock speed vs. performance relationship isn't exactly direct, so the improvement by a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo over a 2.0 GHz Core Duo might be a bit more than 29% in SPEC2000.

However, even if not, a 29% improvement is nothing to sneeze at. I actually thought the performance improvement was going to be less than that. You're right that the FP improvement isn't as impressive, but I still think it's impressive enough.

OTOH, in real world tests (Macworld), the improvement isn't as impressive. Comparing Core 2 Duo vs Core Duo at the same clock speed, Core 2 Duo easily wins, but by a much smaller margin. The improvement ranges from none to 37%, but is usually is lower than 25%. The good news is that Core 2 Duo is never slower in any of their tests.

I'm looking forward to when Apple publishes the SPEC2006 results for the new Core 2 Duo iMac. I don't know if Merom scales as well on SPEC2006 as it does on SPEC2000.

mduell · Sep 11, 2006, 07:48 PM

Good to see ICC and IFC are working on OSX. Now they just need to compile the OS with it.

Eriamjh · Sep 11, 2006, 07:49 PM

I'm not complaining... much. I'm just happy that I can actually upgrade my Intel iMac Core Duo in the future with a simple CPU drop-in. Who knows? Maybe in another 6 months, the Merom will hit 2.5 or 3GHz and the iMac will support it?

Eug · Sep 11, 2006, 09:08 PM

I don't plan on ever replacing my iMac CPU (or GPU). The internals of the iMac and Apple laptops scare me.

Originally Posted by mduell

Good to see ICC and IFC are working on OSX. Now they just need to compile the OS with it.

So they don't compile any part of the OS with icc/ifc?

dru · Sep 12, 2006, 04:05 AM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

I'm not complaining... much. I'm just happy that I can actually upgrade my Intel iMac Core Duo in the future with a simple CPU drop-in. Who knows? Maybe in another 6 months, the Merom will hit 2.5 or 3GHz and the iMac will support it?

I wouldn't depend on that. The next rev of the Core 2 Duo will use a different socket because of a higher speed bus. You might find yourself 'stuck' at 2.3 GHz as the top for this technology. That's fine if you got a Core Duo earlier this year but if you're thinking of buying now you have a bit more to consider.