The chaps over at AnandTech have managed to borrow a Conroe test system at IDF, and have some early benchmarks of the machine stacked up against an overclocked Athlon 64 FX-60. The tests show a 2.66GHz Conroe consistently beating an FX-60 at 2.8GHz, in some cases by up to 42%. The gaming results are especially interesting, as they show large performance gaps despite running at 1280x960 and 1280x1024 with high in-game detail levels.

While we're still comparing to Socket-939 and only using RD480, it does seem very unlikely that AMD would be able to make up this much of a deficit with Socket-AM2 and RD580. Especially looking at titles like F.E.A.R. where Conroe's performance advantage averages over 40%, it looks like Intel's confidence has been well placed.

Also keep in mind that we are over six months away from the actual launch of Conroe, performance can go up from where it is today. We also only looked at the 2.66GHz part, the Extreme Edition version of Conroe will most likely be clocked around 3.0GHz which will extend the performance advantage even further.

Also HEXUS has Intel Conroe vs. AMD Athlon FX-60 benchmarks:

All of the games were run in 1024*768 with the graphics in medium settings. These numbers are just showing you the performance against AMD.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Bot Patch (1024*768)
AMD Athlon FX60 @ 2.8GHz - 159.64fps
Intel Conroe @ 2.67GHz - 186.95fps

Quake 4 - Time Demo (1024*768)
AMD Athlon FX60 @ 2.8GHz - 226.4fps
Intel Conroe @ 2.67GHz - 278.1fps

Half Life Source (pbca_lost_coast) - Time Demo (1024*768)
AMD Athlon FX60 @ 2.8GHz - 112.67fps
Intel Conroe @ 2.67GHz - 140.02.1fps

FEAR (CPU Max, Graphics - Medium) - Time Demo (1024*768) - Average FPS.
AMD Athlon FX60 @ 2.8GHz - 193fps
Intel Conroe @ 2.67GHz - 281fps

These are interesting results for a number of reasons, we are comparing the mid range Conroe CPU against that of the future top of the range FX62. Whilst we know that AMD has Socket AM2 around the corner, and also has DDR2 around the corner we have to say that Intel have a major performance lead. The clock speeds were low and can clearly increase over time, and apparently the CPU scales well (how well, we don't know yet.)