Hardware Intel Lynnfield Core i5-750 & Core i7-860, i7-870

The way I see it, there is no real point in upgrading form a Core 2Quad for most people.

My Q9650 is @ 4.0Ghz and will probably be close to the top results of the i5's.

Best way to spend money on an upgrade would be to opt for a shiny new ATi HD 5870X2 which is out in a week or two.

 

can we get a clock for clock comparison? I can't find any reviews that have that.

 

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no, was just curious if you lived in the states...

what exactly do you not agree with? im curious...i dont recall them saying lynnfield and p55 is not a good choice...

so is it that they think the 750 is a good choice? or that the 920 is a better option than the 860 or 870?
if it's the latter(i assume it is), what can you point out that makes those 2 cpu's a better option than the 920 other than you don't agree?

mmm...5870x2 sounds sexy

 

I'm not saying that you are wrong or anything, but in my situation the p55 combo would be cheaper. Yes, the 750 and 920 are great buys, but I would like the performance of the 920, but cheaper(which it is in my case)

This is all I would have to buy for the P55 setup I want


And this is what I would have to buy for the x58 I would want.


Now the $120 I save could go towards something else (probably my education since I'm in uni.)

Now for other people who are doing an entirely new build, the 750 or 920 would be the best buys.

 

Thanks guys - you just sold me on a 920.

 

Isn't cost one of, if not the most important factors though? If you take it out of the equation then please explain why I should get the 920 over the 965?

 

;o) 2 comments I feel are important.

1. Lynnfield CPUs can take LGA775 coolers simultaneously so long as the mobo is designed with extra holes which are rotated slightly. ASRock's P55 Deluxe is one example of this, expect many others to follow over the coming months.

2. SMT Parking in Windows 7 should improve HT even more by improving thread allocation and prioritising physical over logical. So HT testing should be even better than on Vista, still not essential nor worth paying through the nose for.

 

Looking at cost, i think i'm gona have to get a 750 and put the savings towards an SSD. Overall i think that should make a faster system than a 920 and standard HDD. (obviously 'faster' as in general use in windows rather than FPS or encoding times etc)

now i just have to decide on a mobo... any idea when the reviews will be out??? The EVGA P55 Cheesecake looks very nice, if a bit expensive... but lga1366 mounting holes and that colour scheme... *drool* but i'm not getting anything untill i've seen some reviews

 

this just in.....intel changes pricing of core i7 920 processors to $400USD after overhyped core i5 launch details at 11 here on october 1st. =D

 

i5 is only better if you don't plan on overclocking. The benchmarks listing speeds are only the stock speeds, not the highest the CPU will run at, which can be quite high with th i5s, especially in games and not-so-multithreaded applications.

All of this goes out of the window when you overclock. If you were to overclock a 920 to the same clocks a TurboBoosted i5 was hitting, the i7 would win. This review, as much as I enjoyed it, really is missing clock for clock comparisons, which are what matter (as boogerlad requested).

i5 is a seriously good chip, don't get me wrong, but we are enthusiasts, at least at heart. If you enjoy overclocking and have a decent cooling setup, an i7 920 is a much better buy. You get triple channel memory, more RAM slots, twice the PCIe bandwidth, and you can also whack in a hexacore CPU when they come out.

If you plan on running the CPU at stock, or only doing some very mild overclocking, then get i5. The TurboBoost will do you proud. Especially since most modern games are not very multithreaded.

My point is only further demonstrated by the fact that the overclocked 920 beats almost everything, almost everytime. It gets pipped sometimes at the very top, but it is also running slower than two of the chips.

 

can you try P55 vs X58, with Quad CF and Quad SLI?

ALSO someone tell me why there are no benchmarks for QCF/QSLI at 2560 4xaa 16/af for crysis? i mean at that point im sure CPU scaling will comeinto affect due to the overhead of QCF/QSLI. who games at 1680 with mid settings?

wouldnt checking CPU scaling with the best res/settings on crysis DX10 show how much OCing and/or a new proccessor helps?

 

i guess the main thing for you is i just wouldnt recommend the 860. save another $90 and grab the 750. why pay $90 for 5-10% performance gain? either way, your gonna have a nice rig.

whats goin on austin? long time no see...

 

Are the Q9650 figures the same as the ones you used in the Custom PC magazine a while back. If I remember rightly the Q9650 overclock was less than 4.0ghz. (3.6ghz off the top of my head). I haven't seen a Q9650 that doesn't reach 4ghz so that skews the results slightly. In games the Q9650 should be the same as an e8400 at 4.0ghz and faster in multi threaded applications.

Was just wondering as the results are a good basis for comparison other than this one result (which I happen to run my processor at )

 

No - they are not quite the same figures - we use a different HDD and graphics card now for testing on bit-tech/CPC. We also used a different Q9650, and it overclocked slightly further (4GHz versus 3.96GHz).

 

Surely thats not really a fair comparison? you've included an aftermarket cooler with the 920 even though you've listed a retail cpu? that would save you $60 so the difference would only be $60 which would be small enough to justify the 920 no?

 

i have tested, managed to get 3.25Ghz (155x21) and turbo to 3.7Ghz no problem, no voltage increase needed (well 0.00625+ in offset mode so it's not in Asus's crazy auto mode) and on stock cooling. Bit-tech did take overclocking into account, although without turbo mode. with extensive testing, it is possible to get i5 750 to be stable at something like 3.8Ghz and turbo to 4.5Ghz. tell me a 4.2Ghz air cooled 920 can beat that in single thread applications.

in clock for clock, single threaded application is within error margin between 750 and 920. search for my thread in Hardware forum.

of course, 920 rocks in multi-threaded applications and is still a great buy with P55's inflated price ATM, and that's the future, if you can afford it. but IMHO multi-GPU sucks, tri-channel is not needed at the moment (see 860's performance) and hexacore is rumoured to be an extreme chip only.

 

I'm not going to tell you a 4.2GHz 920 would beat that in single threaded applications. Because I would be lying. However, given the choice between four cores (8 threads) at 4.2GHz and a 750 that can do either four cores at 3.8GHz or one at 4.5GHz, it's a no brainer.

The 920's one core going at 4.2GHz is, what, 7-8 percent slower than the 750's speed? But the kicker is, the 920 still has three cores to play with. I don't think my computer is only ever doing just one thing, and the fews times it is, I can live with the extra cores costing me 300MHz.

Throw in the triple channel, even if you don't need it, and double the PCIe bandwidth, and you have a lot more, and a lot more options, for not much more money.

 

indeed, you are absolutely right. and that's why Bit-tech's article recommended 920 over all LGA1156 at current price point.

but you cannot deny that LGA1156 will become the mainstream in the very near future and will become more affordable as time goes on. with chips that will overclock like E5200 back in the days. if DDR3 price didn't inflate so much for 2 channel, it would be the perfect platform to upgrade from something like E6600.

this pricing is just like cars, for that little extra money, you can get better performance. but is it worth it at the moment? my personal answer is no. in 2 years time, may be, we'll see.

 

I already have an aftermarket cooler for the 860 since I can reuse the LGA775 cooler, never did like the intel coolers actually. I only listed the retail cpu since you cant get the oem version yet.

 

Isn't LGA1156 getting changed after about 6months and intergerated graphics getting added to the chip?