Intel's Core i7 870 & i5 750, Lynnfield: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 8, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Best Gaming CPU?
When I first previewed Lynnfield I theorized that its aggressive turbo modes would make it the best gaming CPU on the market. Most games these days use between two and four threads, not enough for Hyper Threading to be truly beneficial. As a result, Nehalem never really did all that well in games. It was generally faster than the competition, but not much and not on a performance-per-dollar basis.
I ran a few new game tests under Windows 7 to accompany our usual game benchmarks. The competitors here are limited to Lynnfield (of course), Bloomfield, Penryn and AMD's Phenom II.
Dawn of War II doesn't actually shatter any expectations. While turbo clearly benefits Lynnfield, it isn't enough to dethrone Bloomfield. The Core i7 920 is marginally faster than the new i5 750. Here's where things get interesting though: look at minimum frame rates. In both Lynnfield platforms, the minimum frame rates are higher than the competing Bloomfield system. That appears to be Lynnfield's aggressive turbo modes at work. While they're not constantly pushing Lynnfield to a higher clock speed, they do apparently help out when it matters the most.
The other thing to notice is the lowest Lynnfield is a faster gaming CPU than Intel's fastest dual-core: the E8600.
Sacred 2 is an example of performance standings in a more normal manner. Lynnfield can't seem to outperform Bloomfield, and the Core i5 750 actually falls slightly behind AMD's Phenom II X4 965 BE.
With World of Warcraft we're back to turbo mode having a very positive impact. The Core i7 870 is nearly as fast as the i7 975, while the i5 750 is a bit slower than the i7 920. Both are faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE, which is in turn faster than the Q9650.
These three benchmarks seem to outline the three most realistic options for Lynnfield's gaming performance. In situations where its turbo modes can work, Lynnfield can be equal to if not faster than Bloomfield. In those situations where it doesn't kick in, Lynnfield is at least competitive with Phenom II and Bloomfield. In all situations the old Core 2 Quad Q9650 is at the bottom of the charts.
I'll throw in one more option just to complicate things. Have a look at this:
Not exactly the norm, but here we have the Phenom II X4 965 BE faster than everything - including the Core i7 975. Unfortunately there's no one benchmark that will sum up how these things perform, but overall it looks like Lynnfield is going to be one capable gaming CPU.
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HexiumVII - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I must say that Lynnfield is the best stock processor ever. It will o/c itself without you having to touch it at all. Nearly perfect for the masses. I absolutely can't wait for the notebook incarnation.ClagMaster - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
The performance of these processors is what I thought they would be based on your May Preview Article. Its great the NDA is lifted and we can now see what this processor can really do.This is hardly a Celeron. I know a troll in earlier Lynnfield/P55 that should be eating crow.
Apahutec - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Not sure what "core parking" priorities are (reduce power consumption by grouping tasks on active CPUs, or tune performance by taking into account cache trashing in scheduler decisions), but it sounds like it could even be beneficial on my Core 2 Quad: single socket, no HT, but two Core2 Duo (each with its own L2 cache) glued together.erple2 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Sounds like it, but the logic that controls that on the CPU is on the CPU, and uses up a couple million transistors. That would require a re-spin of the Core 2 parts (which, given the P55 platform release, I think is a safe bet won't happen), however.Obsy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I don't get how Turbo Boost ends "dual-core or quad-core?" I know that an on-die IGP is a selling point for the upcoming 32nm dual cores, but wouldn't they be clocked higher than these quads and have Turbo Boost too? There will be dual cores clocked higher than quads again. Or is Intel not clocking their dual cores past the speeds of quads?macs - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Would be interesting an article about P55 mobo with nf200 chip and 2 gpu...Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
We talked to NVIDIA about that scenario a couple of weeks ago. A NF200 chip would not make a significant difference in performance, which is why they're letting manufacturers go ahead and just split lanes with a straight-up bridge chip.Darkanyons - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Thanks for this great article!!Tomzi - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Do the PCIe controller's voltage demands impose stricter limits on undervolting in the case of Lynnfield processors compared to Bloomfield? I can run my i7 920 at stock frequncies undervolted to 0.9xx V VCore. How much voltage (power consumption) reduction can we expect from the an i5 750?This might not be a hot topic so close to the release of the new chips when everyone is focused on top performance comparisons but I've always been interested in undervolting/clocking and would like to see a more complete picture.
Tomzi - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
750 and 870 undervolted by ~0.1V reported on silentpcreview.