Yonah vs Merom, is Merom not so great?

[FudgeNuggets]

I've been reading a LOT lately because I just bought a Core Duo Mac mini which uses the Yonah chip. I almost bought an iMac with a Merom chip in it but I looked at benchmarks over at MacWorld and at CNET and both of them show only roughly a 10% increase with a 2ghz 4mb Merom over a 2ghz 2mb Yonah. Does this sound right? I thought the Core2 Duo was supposed to mop the floor with the Core Duo. Is this due to the slower 667mhz fsb?????? Or do you think these tests are off because they were done with a Mac benchmark instead of Windows benchmarks? I'm asking because I was going to buy a Core2 Merom to put into my mini but I'm not paying $300+ for a 10% speed increase. I guess 64bit is better than 32 but only 10% difference? I guess if that's the case then I can hold off on the Merom until the prices go down and OSX Leopard and Vista is out as it really won't matter to Tiger and XP, right?

http://www.macworld.com/2006/09/firstlooks/imacbench/index.php

[TheCheat]

Yohan was never a slouch. Nor was the Dothan or Banias arch. Core 2 Duo was supposed to mop the floor with the netburst architecture, not the core duo architecture.

If you really want to get down to it, Core 2 Duo is basically just an improved version of Core Duo. Combining the best of the netburst arch and the Yohan arch. I believe Merom also improved battery life by a decent margin, but dont quote me on that.

hope that helps

[FudgeNuggets]

So I guess 64-bit code is the main advantage for when Leopard and Vista arrive. I guess I'll hold off on Merom until those 2 OSes hit the market.