Benchmarks and initial thoughts
The dual-processor Harpertowns' arithmetic performance is stronger than faster-clocked Clovertown's.
Integer multimedia performance is also very strong. However, the float appears to be compromised by the choice of OS.
Latency is pretty much where you'd expect it to be.
Again, the CINEBENCH performance is inhibited by the system setup. We'd expect Harpertown to score around 20,000 CINEMarks here, matching the faster-clocked Clovertowns' showing.
The same is true for well-multithreaded POV-ray.
Thoughts
Harpertown is a better quad-core processor than Clovertown: it's as simple as that. More L2 cache will gobble-up larger application data-sets and a higher FSB, on select models, will ensure that per-CPU bandwidth is less of a concern. Further, SSE4.1-optimised applications will run a lot faster.Our benchmark results haven't told us anything radically new about the Penryn-based Harpertown and Seaburg chipset combo, really.
Stoakley, comprising of Harpertown processor(s) and the Seaburg chipset, will be officially released in November 2007, and that's when the Barcelona vs. Harpertown showdown will take place. Right now, though, think of Stoakley as a beefed-up version of the incumbent Clovertown/5000-series chipset.
