The Intel Core i3 530 Review - Great for Overclockers & Gamers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 22, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking the i3 - 4GHz with the Stock Cooler
I’ve become a fan of stock voltage overclocking over the past few years. As power consumption and efficiency has become more important, and manufacturing processes improved, how far you can push a CPU without increasing its core voltage appears to be the most efficient way to overclock. You minimize any increases in power consumption while maximizing performance. You really find out whether or not you’ve been sold a chip that’s artificially binned lower than it could have.
With Bloomfield, Intel hit a new peak for how far you can expect to push a CPU without increasing voltage. AMD followed with the Phenom II, but Lynnfield took a step back. Thanks to its on-die PCIe controller, Lynnfield needed some amount of additional voltage to overclock well. Clarkdale is somewhere in between. It lacks the crippling on-die PCIe controller, but it’s also a much higher volume part which by definition shouldn’t be as overclockable.
The Core i3 530 runs at 2.93GHz by default, with no available turbo boost. Without swapping coolers or feeding the chip any additional voltage, the most I got out of it was 3.3GHz (150MHz BCLK x 22). Hardly impressive.
I added another 0.16V to the CPU’s core voltage. That’s just under 14%. And here’s what I was able to do:
That’s 4GHz, stable using the stock heatsink/fan. Part of the trick to overclocking this thing was lowering the clock multiplier. Despite always keeping the QPI and memory frequencies in spec, lowering the clock multiplier on the chip improved stability significantly and allowed me to reach much higher frequencies.
I could push beyond 4GHz but that requires more voltage and potentially better cooling. With a stable 4GHz overclock, I was happy.
If you’ll remember from my review of the processor, my Phenom II X2 550 BE managed 3.7GHz using the stock cooler and a pound of voltage. Unfortunately it’s not enough to challenge the overclocked 530.
| CPU | x264 HD 3.03 - 2nd pass | 7-zip KB/s | Batman: AA | Dawn of War II | Dragon Age Origins | World of Warcraft |
| Intel Core i3 530 @ 4GHz | 18.4 fps | 2822 | 192 fps | 62.7 fps | 115 fps | 92 fps |
| AMD Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.7GHz | 10.4 fps | 2681 | 170 fps | 50.9 fps | 63 fps | 60.8 fps |
| AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.4GHz) | 22.2 fps | 3143 | 196 fps | 54.3 fps | 109 fps | 74.1 fps |
Even an overclocked Athlon II X4 630 isn’t going to dramatically change things. It’ll still be faster in multithreaded applications, and still the overall slower gaming CPU.
If the Core i3 530 is right for you, overclocking is just going to make it more right.
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gfredsen - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
I know this borders on thread crapping, but can someone tell me why Fry's is selling the newer 45 Watt AMD cpus and virtually no one else.I post this here, because for the price I still believe the AMD solution to be the best for how I use a computer, HTPC and SOHO.
Add in the price of a MB, DDR3 which I don't have and the Intel i3 still offers me no advantage that I can see.
I'll pass for now.
papapapapapapapababy - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
"From Intel the closest competitor is the Core 2 Duo E7600, which runs at 3.06GHz but with a 3MB L2 cache"lol my old retro E6600 runs at 3.2GHz also has 4MB L2 cache, and smokes my 3,2GHZ E7300 in photoshop... intel am fail.
smilingcrow - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
If you can't get more than 3.2 from your E7300 sounds like your motherboard = fail.papapapapapapapababy - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
diminishing returns, girl.smilingcrow - Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - link
Hi girl, I don't really need to know your gender and the fact that you aren't very good at over-clocking might reinforce in some peoples’ minds that the fairer sex aren’t so good with tech. Anyway, take a look at the forums at overclockers.com so you can get the best out of that CPU.Fjodor2000 - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Anand, is there any way you could provide reliable measurements for the Core i3-530's Idle Power Consumption when only the IGP is used? One of your earlier articles (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... indicated that it could reach as low as 27.6 W (!), however in that article there were no details on what Clarkdale CPU was used or other details of the system used.- Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Your going to need a mini-ITX board, some Gskill 1.35v memory, a SSD, a pico-PSU (probably with 100w brick) to have any chance of reaching 27.6w idle.I know for a fact that Intel used Gskill 1.35v memory (there was an article about it somewhere)and I'm sure they used every trick in the book to get the idle power down that low. I looked on Newegg for a mini-ITX board and couldn't find one so your probably going to have to wait if you want the ultimate power sipping HTPC.
smilingcrow - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
The G.Skill Eco RAM (1.35V) has a negligible impact on idle power consumption according to the only review I’m seen which isn’t surprising as a single RAM stick at stock voltage doesn’t consume much to start with. At load the test showed gains of between 3 and 5W.I’m not a fan of this site but it’s the only review I could find and probably even they couldn’t screw this up; on second thoughts…
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16833/1/1/3/">http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16833/1/1/3/
Fjodor2000 - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
I see. It would be really interesting to see if it can be reproduced, and just how low it is possible to get the power consumption using such a system as you described.Also, I think it would be interesting to see the Idle Power Consumption with IGP Only, for a more "normal" system. I.e. uATX motherboard (without Idle power issues!), Intel i3-530 CPU, 4 GB RAM, ~1 TB low power HDD, and NO external GFX-card (the review for some reason currently only contains Idle power consumption when used with an external GFX card).
Anand, do you think it would be possible to run an idle power consumption test for the core i3-530 setup you used, but without an external GFX card? After all, I suppose that will be the common setup for most i3-530 based systems?
kwrzesien - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
I just built a 530 system with the Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H board, Artic Freezer 7, a WD 640 GB Blue, LG BDROM/DVDRW, 4 GB Mushkin (2 x 2GB 1600 C9) RAM with an Antec 380D Green PSU in a P180 mini case (200mm, 120mm fans on low). Terrific build, everything works great except the Freezer is blocking the first DIMM slot so installing a second pair of sticks is going to be a problem.Idle power at Win7 desktop, all stock settings, no discrete video card, is 41W! I was expecting ~60W so I'm really surprised, this puts my Core i7 920 to shame - but that is also my 'everything' box. I highly recommend this entire setup except maybe the Freezer - it is just too bulky in the fan cage. Don't go bigger on the PSU unless you need more than one 6-pin PEG connector or are installing 4+ hard drives. Next build (ordering today) will be the same with an SSD and 1TB Green drive...