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
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
And we're done. DivX, historically a stronghold for AMD's Phenom II processors (at least compared to their price-competitive Penryn counterparts) is faster on the Core i5 750 than on the Phenom II X4 965 BE. What's wrong with that?
The i5 750 costs $199, the 965 BE costs $245. Intel is selling you more transistors for less than AMD is for once.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
In the first pass AMD is quite competitive, outpacing the i5 750, but when we get to the actual encode:
It's close, but the cheaper i5 750 is faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE once again; Hyper Threading keeps the i7 920 ahead.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
AMD is about 6% faster than the i5 750 here, it looks like the Phenom II does have some hope left for it. Let's see how the rest unfolds...
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jnr0077 - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
well i have the better model i5 750 1156 socket gaming score is 5.9 on basic 500 gb hd 7200 with a ssd it hit 7.9 on a gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 12gb ram. as for the pricecost was cheep intel (R)quad core (TM) i5 750 @2.66 GHz 2.67GHz cost around £100 mobo cost me £100 i though it is a very cheep upgrade considering price i wood like to here what score any Pehnom II X4 965 hit
Milleman - Sunday, September 13, 2009 - link
The article itself is good. But Why on earth compare a standard clocked CPU (AMD) against overclocked ones (Intel). Makes no objective sense att all. I's like having a car test between a standard car and a tuned racecar. Of course the racecar will win in performance. The overclock results shouldn't be there at all. Maybe as a remark that tell what will happen if one would like to overclock. Looks rather unfair and biased.So... why??
Nich0 - Sunday, September 13, 2009 - link
All I saw in this article is comparison of CPUs in their stock configuration. What's wrong with that?Bozo Galora - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
I must say this was a very good logical coherent review with just about all the info one would requireGood job - I had no intention of getting one of these, but now I may change my mind
IntelUser2000 - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-0299...">http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-0299...According to Intel...
Core i7 870:
5/4/2/2
Core i7 860:
5/4/1/1/
Core i5 750:
4/4/1/1
So the i7 870 has higher Turbo mode for 3 and 4 cores than 860 does.
Nich0 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Yeah and that means that the OC numbers for the 750 with Turbo don't make sense. For example 4160 / 160 = 26 which would be a Turbo of 6 BCLK.Same thing for the 860 OC 3C/4C Turbo number.
Am I missing something?
IntelUser2000 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Its likely Anand has ES versions or such which allows multiplier adjustments. But at stock, the linked speeds are the Turbo Boost grades.Nich0 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Yeah obviously I am not disputing the stock OC with Turbo enabled (that sounds weird: stock OC?), ie 160*20= 3200, but just what it means in terms of Turbo: it 'should' read 3.36 for 3/4C and 3.84 for 1/2C if the 1/1/4/4 Turbo spec is correct.rdkone - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
I don't like the fact that the BCLK directly and synchronously communicates with PCIe buss, thus affecting the videocard negatively (among other PCIe cards)... This is like overclocking years ago whereas the PCI bus would be affected in the same way and causing headaches... This is a major issue I feel for those wanting to push a fairly big overclock on these CPU's... Intel screwed the pooch for us overclockers I feel... Just more justification to limp along with my core 2 quad at 4.1Ghz rock solid... Like others have said, is funny how the articles don't show older CPU overclocks against all this new garb... In the past they used to... But that hurts sales : )SnowleopardPC - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
Ok, so what type of boost do I get over a Q6600 with 8gb of ram and windows 7 64?Is it worth upgrading or waiting for that 6 core 32nm to come out next year?
To upgrade to any of these I will need to replace a motherboard and ram with the processor.