News Intel Core i3 and i5 hit UK shops

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/01/08/intel-core-i3-and-i5-hit-uk-shops/1

 

/me strokes his Q6600 and wonders whether it's time to choke it.

Tempted definately. The i5-750 looks to be a new bargain in the sense of bang for buck and overclock potential.

 

im going to build a HTPC for my parents fairly shortly toying between this or a phenom / 785 based machine will see if prices drop over the next few weeks

 

Exactly the same conclusion as I'm close to...

 

i5 750 is definitely a good bargain. and best of all, you can do crossfire on P55/Lynnfield/LGA1156 with less than 4% performance loss compared to the big brother X58/Bloomfield/LGA1366.


161% vs 155%, that's 4% performance loss compared to X58. or 5% performance gain in crossfire only for more than £100 spent on the platform. performance differences will be even less with weaker cards.

 

Seen the cost prices for these chips and its shocking the amount of money the companys are putting on them.

 

Theres a random comma in the sentence: earlier this, week but retailers

I'm looking forward to a recommended Hardware Guide for Jan?

 

Pricing isn't even close to being that simple though. Intel have to be selling the processors at a price that not only covers manufacturing costs, but also development costs of both the CPU, the Fabs and gives enough left over for future developments and a bit of profit. When all is said and done the actual profit margin on a per processor basis isn't nearly as good as a simple cost vs. retail price would suggest.

That's before you take into account the retailer's cut, they like to make a profit too.

 

Hmmm German prices:

i5-750 160euro
i5-660/661 175euro
i5-670 250euro

 

hmm i dunno, i have my Q6600 OC'd and i know its 100% stable. i can run everything i want to with bells on i dont want to have to take my motherboard out and start again. nah the Q6600 wil be in there for at least another year

 

Same here, this Q6600 is OC'd hard and running hard too but its never flinched so i think this will see out the rest of the hardware in there with the exception of the PSU which i'll probably swap to any new build i do (Enermax Galaxy DXX 1KW)

 

Just a quick question...

Can the new i3 and i5 CPUs run on a P55 board as long as you don't need the inbuilt GPU or do you need to run the H55?

 

That's exactly how bt tested them. With a Gigabyte UD2. I'm very interested to see what the buyers guide says this month, but I would guess that a UD2 with an i3-530 could be very tempting with a future i5/i7 upgrade path....

 

Cheers... I knew my brain wasn't working today.

Looking at the current available current prices of the H55 boards it also looks like a better option to go for the P55 board and an add in DX10 GPU as it seems to be cheaper, you get more specs on the P55 and will get much better graphics performance with the add-in GPU.

Now if only Intel would release an i3-530 version without the GPU... surely that would give performance to match the Q6600 and cost around £60-80.... time to stop daydreaming me thinks.

 

The i5-750 doesn't have the graphics core in it right?

 

Nope, you are correct.

It won't happen. The silicon for the GPU also has the memory controller and PCI-Express on it.

We considered it but the i3 falls between the enthusiast overclocker and affordable PC. We mentioned you can lop £50 off the price if it runs over your budget, or, you're not into overclocking because the higher native core clock then it works, however the BIOS on the UD2 still needs work so we didn't outright recommend it.

 

Is any one aware of whether the internal GPUs in these chips support hardware overlay, as opposed to the software emulation seen in GMA950/4500 etc? I use an application reliant on hardware overlay... Intel integrated solutions emulate it in software, killing the performance of my app.