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
New Heatsinks and Motherboards
LGA-1156 processors use a different heatsink than both LGA-1366 and LGA-775 chips.
Lynnfield and its cooler
As the numbers would imply, the LGA-1156 heatsink has a larger footprint than LGA-775 but smaller than LGA-1366.
From Left to Right: Retail LGA-1366 Cooler, Retail LGA-1156 Cooler, Retail 45nm LGA-775 Cooler
The retail LGA-1156 is actually much closer to the 45nm LGA-775 retail cooler than the LGA-1366 retail HSF:
As you'll see later on in the article, the retail cooler isn't very good for heavy overclocking. Power users will want something a little bigger:
The Lynnfield/P55 launch is huge. Virtually every single motherboard manufacturer has a P55 board available. Prices range from ~$110 - $300 depending on the number of bells and whistles.
Gigabyte's ultra high end UD6 (left) and Gigabyte's lower end micro-ATX UD4 (right)
Gigabyte's high end UD6 comes with 6 DIMM slots like its X58 brethren.
Micro-ATX is increasing in popularity and we actually have some good options this time if you're trying to build a smaller Lynnfield system. Combined with Lynnfield's excellent idle power (the lowest of any quad-core we've ever tested), this could make for an unusually potent HTPC.
A closer look at Gigabyte's micro-ATX P55M-UD4
The only thing we're really missing is a good mini-ITX Lynnfield board. But perhaps the manufacturers will wait until we have on-package graphics before going down that route...
One More Time: New H55 Boards Next Year
As I subtley implied at the end of the last section, Intel is bringing on-package graphics to Nehalem starting in Q4 of this year:
The 32nm Nehalem shrink, codenamed Westmere, will be available with a 45nm Intel graphics core on the processor's package. This graphics core is an evolution of what's currently in the G45 chipset and not Larrabee (although eventually that will change). From what I've heard, this is actually going to be Intel's first reasonably good integrated graphics core.
With the graphics on-package, there needs to be an interface from the processor socket to video output located on the motherboard. As you can see from the P55 motherboards that are launching today: none of them have this video out. Granted there aren't any CPUs out to take advantage of it either.
No DVI/HDMI/VGA out...yet
Early next year (or maybe even late this year) we'll see a new breed of LGA-1156 motherboards with video output, designed for use with these Westmere IGP parts. Rumor has it that these motherboards will use Intel's H55 chipset.
Lynnfield early adopters need not worry, 32nm quad-core processors won't be out for at least a year.
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jonup - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Unfortunately people in corporate world do not make a difference between a HD4500 and a GX790. As lond as the Intel can display spreadsheets its good enough (or better) than a GTX295/HD4890X2, because it is Intel. You can change ignorance when it works.PassingBy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
My horizons are broad enough, thank you. The needs of many corporate desktops/laptops will be met by Clarkdale/Arrandale and no, nobody will go blind or suffer eyestrain (by virtue of the IGP anyway).PassingBy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
No edit function, so, as I point out later in the thread, people reading this review presumably won't be interested in IGPs anyway, given that these processors now have no IGP market. Wait for Clarkdale before trying to compare IGPs.dragunover - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Thanks for the review, if not as soon as I wanted it!Boobs McGee - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Do you guys have plans to do a motherboard review roundup for P55?If not, please do.
Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I actually have three roundups planned, we have 15 boards here ranging from the $100 uATX items up to the $300 EVGA Classified series. We are only testing with retail products, released BIOS', and retail processors so the delivery of more than 70% of the boards late last week has created a small logjam. ;)The first article should be up on Thursday with a couple of my favorite boards and then a rather large one up on Monday and the last one a few days after that. Raja is working on a separate roundup of the top three boards targeted for the more extreme OC community. We will also have a P55 memory specific article shortly.
ClagMaster - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Looking forward to reading these P55 motherboard roundups.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Yes, Gary is nearly complete with his. Give him another day and it'll be up :)Take care,
Anand
Comdrpopnfresh - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
By creating a new socket- they're providing a disincentive for early adopters of bloomfield. This chip is literally a humpty-dumpty that stands to benefit intel with everyone suffering a small loss of their own. The benefits of lynnfield vs bloomfield come from shuffling the architectural deck of nehalem. In reality, it only shows the possibilities of an inflexible architecture.The turbo mode isn't cutting it in day-to-day power consumption reduction. On the scale of a day, the average shmoe who is ass enough to leave a computer on for no reason gains no benefit. Lower the reach of a voltage plane, and reduce the number of components sucking juice, that only present benefits under certain situations (a third memory channel), and shmoe is happier.
If it was in the article, I apologize, but with the pci-e controller being on the un-core... what happens on a chipset with integrated graphics? Will the igp be linked to the processor now, rather than a bridge chip? If ati or nvidia made their own supporting chipsets with an igp- would the igp represent a chip onto itself, solely connected to the cpu, or would it have to work through dmi, and leave those on-die pci-e lanes for domestic usage?
It seems this is the warning rattle to nvidia that they chose their place with ion, and are stuck in it. When the change to 32nm comes, and the gpu is integrated into the cpu- what kind of robust 3rd party chipsets could exist in the budget end? Sure, you can always add a dedicated, off-die, gpu... but for budget boards used to eons of making room for a cpu and working a bridge chip around an igp- either horrible inefficiencies will creep up, or higher prices.
My money is on westmere having at least three power planes.
I'd like to know: with the pci-e controller on-die now... what impact this puts on graphics cards with higher on-card memory. Does it strengthen or minimalize it?
And, can the cpu now share the gpu's memory as a way to extend cache- after years of being forced to share the system pool. That 16gb/s link to gddr5 looks mouthwatering. I'd like to see performance tests run with the pci-e varient ssds floating around out there saddled to the on-die pci-e lanes, and a graphics card running off of chipset. Rather than elevating a horse-power driven graphics subsystem, I think the benefits of supplying more 'torque' by freeing mass storage ssds from the SATA interface would be far more substantial, and in all applications of the PC. You already have the means for nearly 2+2/3 times the theoretical bandwidth of SATA-6- which up til now seems rather bug-ridden and defunct.
Also interested in the outcomes of usb3 with this- as usb is built on the foundations of pci-e, is it not? If usb3 can allow for pci-e externally, and you remove the latency issue of usb signaling traveling from some peripheral bridge chip to the cpu, and just jack the usb3 communications into the cpu... could one use usb3 as a computer-to-computer psuedo qpi teaming/networking bridge for inter-desktop cpu communication. skip the entire bottleneck of client-level software implementation, and the subsystem communication buses for out-of-box signaling too...
plague911 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
The market just got a little more crowded so hopefully this will bring a reduction in prices of the 920. but..
“The Core i7 870 gets close enough to the Core i7 975 that I'm having a hard time justifying the LGA-1366 platform at all. As I see it, LGA-1366 has a few advantages:
1) High-end multi-GPU Performance
2) Stock Voltage Overclocking
3) Future support for 6-core Gulftown CPUs
“
Your exactly right 1366 I think is going to be be the best option to “future proof” my system however the new chips make the 920- seem a little low on features. With the goal of “performance on a budget” I feel like we are stuck either getting a board with a socket which wont compete in the future, or chip which is weaker than its lower class cousins. Unfortunately I dont see any of this being fixed in the next few cycles. Id like to see a low clocked gulftown (to save cost) feature rich with good OC potential thats on the lower end of the price scale. To me this would be a good follow up to 920 but but it dosent seem like that will be coming out for several cycles. Unless ofc i'm missing something which is probably the case.