Hardware Intel Core i5-661 & Core i3-530 CPU Review

Great article! Those new CPUs seem to be pretty great. However, all this article reaaallly did was solidify my purchase of a i5-750. Maybe I missed it, but was the on chip GPU tested at all?

Oh yeah, and anyone else remember Intel's excuse of saying the hyperthreading feature was the only reason a CPU would be called an i7? What ever happened to that?

Someone seriously needs to get Intel a better cpu-naming-guy. If it were me:

i3 - 1156 budget CPUs, model numbers indicate performance

i5 - 1156 midrange CPUs, model numbers indicate performance

i7 - 1366 CPUs, model numbers indicate performance

To reduce confusion put something like "HT" in the title for ones that have hyperthreading instead of giving them the same name of CPUs that exist on entirely different sockets. Intel is either clearly trying to deliberately confuse the consumer into buying the the two useless lynnfield models by calling them i7s, or their naming schemes are under the command of some PR marketing robot.

 

Nice article, though I wish intel would make the names less confusing

 

They did get to about 6.5GHz, though not on air.

Well, I'd just drop some cash on a better cooler (Still using stock, plan on getting Xigmatek HDT-SD964 due to height issues.), OC my G0 Q6600 to 3.0GHz and wait for SandyBridge.

 

I'm talking about Page 3: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/01/04/intel-core-i5-661-core-i3-530-cpu-review/3
There is a "complete" list of all the new Core i-series (i3,i5,i7) which also includes mobile processors which are as yet unavailable. The Core i7 720QM/820QM are part of the Core i-series, and they are available now; surely they should have been included on the feature table?! (Sorry I didn't make which table I was referring to clear in my first post.)

 

you need to review the AMD athlon II X3 425/435. Its the gem in AMD's crown....if other review sites are to be believed. With current prices, the i5 platform sits too close to the 965 platform in terms of cost for a new build.

 

Oh, yes, true to the table, I'll add them when I have time

 

All the links in the performance analysis section on the last page are messed up, they're one page ahead of what they should be.

 

Intel Core i3-530 should surely be on overall at 7/10?

Value = 8, Performance = 6

(8 + 6) / 2 = 7

 

I'm curious what kind of system temps you guys saw with the OCd i5 750. I was already planning on getting that chip for my next system upgrade, but these numbers have settled, cemented and sealed the buy. If I can get a stable rig running at 4.15GHz, I would be in heaven.

 

Intel have already moved up to 32nm, while AMD's latest upcoming line of processors (Thuban, 6 core) is running on a 45nm.

AMD is falling behind further and further.

Can AMD pull through with some sort of magnificent release? Something in the dark working behind closed doors? Or are they down the road of "mediocre at best" for years to come?

I love Intel & AMD, without one you can't have the other (in a fair price range that is). I am a true AMD fan and always will be, at the same time I am definitely not afraid to admit they are getting beat pretty bad here, and the i5's are only making it harder for AMD to contend, thanks to i5's cheaper (than i7) prices.

I just find the battle between these 2 companies very interesting, and I love following this tale AMD long ago made a choice to not go with hyper-threading and ever since they have been getting beat, the only thing AMD had going for them was their low prices + high clock speeds, but now with the Intels upcoming proccies, it seems that the edge in clock speeds AMD once had, is also going to be in question. AMD can make their processors only so much cheaper before it starts to hurt their income (it already has, and can only continue to worsen, actually.)

I'm really interested to see how AMD plan on contending with Intel in the near future to come. Their Thuban is nice in that it is backwards compatible with current gen mo-bo's, but the fact it needs 6 cores and a high clock to contend with Intel's older proccies, it just seems like they are falling far behind.

Come on AMD, I'm always rooting for you

 

The OC table still shows the E8400 not the E7400, I read this earlier today & was a bit confused. I believe the E8400 would have been a better comparison.

 

It doesn't work that way. The overall score is not an average - we have the score guide at the bottom of every page to relate exactly what each number represents.

 

So did Intel give up on calling anything with HT an i7, or did that ONLY apply to Lynnfield/Bloomfield?

 

i thought it was:
i5 4 threads
i7 8 threads
until i got confused when 6-core is announced to be i7.

the 32nm looks promising, can't wait for an affordable i7 in 32nm.

 

Nope. They use the new branding to communicate wether a customer is buying a high-end (i7), mainstream (i5) or value (i3) part. Then after that, they mess it up again by mixing all the ranges up and adding meaningless numbers, aswell as using the old C2D branding alongside it, and keeping the pentium, celeron and atom brands aswell.
To make absolutely sure that nobody buys the right processor, they added some suffixes to the mobile parts too.

I think they did a pretty good job. The standard in rebranding land was set pretty high by nVidia (now reVidia), but i'm not sure that nVidia is going to be able to take the rebranding crown back with their new Tesla/Fermi/GT300 launch. It's going to be exciting to see

 

Xtra is ranting... again.

Though I don't understand either why they don't just go back to a naming scheme that makes sense:

Core iX X00

i3 - dual core
i5 - quad core [no HT]
i7 - quad core [HT]

X00 where 100 is the lowest CPU clock and 900 being the highest.
If you then have to introduce new ones later, you can use the old nVidia naming of X50 to "squeeze" them in.

 

You know I really dont care for Intel super glue technique to "beat" AMD to the market, at least AMD when they release something its actually what it says it is and isnt just two dies linked together, at least AMD is working on a true cpu and gpu in one die rather then intels super glue of a cpu and gpu. I dont remember but is the ATOM/GPU combo the same as their super glue version of the i3 or is it actually on one die?

 

It's one die, and it's not really a superglue approach since the memory controller and PCI-Express also sit on the 45nm die too. It's a time to market thing.

 

I was hoping for the same thing. I expect it to be horrendous, but I wanted to see if there is any hope at all for Intel in terms of graphics.

 

I'll be sticking with my Q6700 - it's more than powerful enough and still competes in my opinion. This test is not the only test and some show the Q6700 and quad core 2 duos performing brilliantly against core i5/i7. In the real world my overclocked q6700 still gets higher overrall scores than core i5/i7 in quite a few instances. I'm running windows 7 - 64 bit.

Why upgrade? when you already have a powerful chip. It's a waste of money and a waste of the planet's resources.