The already intense CPU war is set to intensify later this year and continue early next years with the introduction of AMD's Phenom X4s and X2s and Intel's 45nm Wolfdales and Yorkfields. But while AMD is still talking about the new Phenoms (codename Agena and Kuma), Intel is simply doing its new thing and that is letting a few samples of its upcoming processors 'slip' into the hands of testers.

With Phenom benchmarks still non-existent, the guys at HKEPC have posted the first results with one of Intel's new 45nm CPUs, a dual-core 2.33GHz Wolfdale. Put up against a Conroe E5550 clocked at 2.33GHz, the forthcoming Wolfdale has managed to beat its older brother in every single test conducted.

Clocked at 2.33GHz, with a 1333MHz FSB and 6 MB of L2 cache, the Wolfdale has shown advantages as low as 0.22% in the ALU test of Sandra 2007 and 0.78% in PCMark 05's CPU test but it has also returned performance gains of 115.63% when encoding with DivX 6.6 Alpha, 31.12% when playing Half-Life 2 and 16.72% when trying out Serios Sam 2.



The overall performance, which can be viewed here shows that Intel's new 45nm parts are more than just a die shrink and that the Phenoms will have some worthy adversaries waiting for them just as they make it to the market.

Plus, in addition to the performance gains, the sample tested by HKEPC has also managed to draw less power and work at significantly ( minus ten degrees) lower than its 65nm brother, which is sure to please the overclocking enthusiasts.

The 2.33GHz Wolfdale will be released in Q1 2008.