Core i5 750 - Core i7 860 and 870 processor review [guru3d]

If you can afford it, and can overclock, then Bloomfield and X58 is the only choice. TurboBoost's advantage is moot when you can manually overclock a 920 to the same kind of levels it would hit on an 860. And you are also buying triple channel memory, more capacity for the memory, the option for more cores in the future (I'm fairly certain it is less than a year until hexacore chips, but I can't remember where I read that so don't quote me yet), and you are getting twice as much PCI-e bandwidth.

 

I5 + good P55 board is about the same price as a PII 965 + good AM3 board, and the i5s overclock very well so and are faster clock for clock so I don't get why u guys say there is no place for em

 

you guys in the states have to wait till theses prices come down on the cpu's and boards.
if you live near a micro center just get there and pay what you should for this lesser mainstream socket.
230usd
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317378
this ones 20 minutes from me hell i did not know they were this close?
f newegg
300usd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

 

My setup @ 3.16 with RAM @ 1600 beats the stock i5 all over the place, and loses very slightly in the memory benchmarks..

As far as im concerned, i5 is pointless... atleast for me. i7 + or nothing.

 

Well, the new processors look beautiful, but I still see no reason to upgrade mine if a phenom IIx4 965 can keep up with em pretty well. I think I can live without one extra frame . Looks like they get pretty power hungry when o/c'ed though. So much for a green processor? I guess 90%+ of the world doesnt overclock.

 

A good P55 board will cost you $185, and a good AM3 (790GX) board $125.
And an i5 is nehalem without SMT, Tripple Channel and all of what made nehalem a great performer (though expensive). In other words, an i5 can't meet the performance of a Deneb based CPU, unless you overclock. And you have that through Turbo Boost.

My point is that AMD is already offering what Intel tries to show as something new (Performance/$) through Phenom II X4/X3 and with a wider upgrade path than Intel in the future.
And lots of folks will give more credit to Core i5/i7 CPU's thanks to benchmarks results that have little to no resemblance to what the average user needs a desktop PC for.

 

I agree that phenom II has a better upgrade path, I am an AMD fan but if u look at any i5 review including the Guru3D one, you see the i5 outperforming the Phenom II (not including synthetic benchmarks)

here in the UK also at OCUK, the only boards I consider good AM3 ones start at £90 compared to £115 of the i5, but the i5 750 cost £20 less than the 965, while prices may change this is what I am basing my assessment on

 

I am no fan of AMD.

I'm basing my statements on many reviews on the net, techreport, anandtech, lost circuits, bit tech, etc.

Again, the i5 750 (not i7 860/870), offers similar or lower performance compared to a X4 955/965 while making use of turbo boost in some cases.

To give an example, Fallout 3.
As far as I know, it is not an example of a multithreaded application, in which case turbo boost will kick in:



Here you can see that an i5 750 outperforms an i7 920. We are talking about 2 or 3 frames here. But then an X3 720 is just 3 frames behind.
And this serves as an example to prove my point. AMD already offers what Intel tries to show as something new with Core i5 700/ i7 800.

EDIT: And to be fair, an X3 720 should be paired with a 785G board, which will cost you around $90.

 

lol look at the rest of the games on that same anandtech review, same page even, and see the i5 750 outperform the PII 965, so if they cost about the same but i5 is getting similar or better performance how can u say it has no place?

 

hey mario did you even read the anandtech review?

Simply put i5 wipes the floor of AMD's product lineup in both price and performance.

 

stupid the 860 costs more than the 920

owell

i say i7 skt 1366 all the way.

 

Unless you care about 130 FPS vs 112 FPS, neglect the fact that Far Cry 2 is an Intel sponsored game (and pretty sucky too), and don't care about quite a few more reviews on the net, you can't say an i5 is a better and cheaper option than a Phenom II.

 

I actually did, and know how anand is biased towards Intel. That's why I base my opinions on many reviews.

 

hmm ok, whatever floats your boat.

 

I read 5 different reviews including guru that said an i5 beat the phenom, its an alternative to phenomII for the same price and a good one, I'm just disputing how u said it had no place, its exactly what they needed to fight AMD at that price point, or at least make AMD drop their prices to reclaim price/performance

 

In my opinion it has no place because AMD already offers similar performance at a lower price (X3 720 - 785G) compared to an i5 750, and X4 955/965 - 790GX compared to an i7 860. The i7 870 pricing is ridiculous.

And to make myself clear again, I'm talking abount similar performance in real world applications and don't really care about a 4-5 FPS advantage of a lynnfield CPU while could be using turbo boost. Because you can get a cheaper AM3 system with similar or little lower performance, and in a lot of cases not seeing the difference (like games).

And it worries me how a lot of people think Intels offerings destroys AMDs because of synthetic benchmarks that have almost no resemblance to real world applications.

EDIT: And yes, I'd love to see AMD's prices go down. But I don't see that happening.

 

These CPU's are honestly more than a bit underwhelming. These models don't really add anything new, and they're still more expensive than the highest end AMD offerings. In a real world scenario it just makes more sense to get an AMD, regardless of the fact that it performs less in benchmarks.

 

agreed the 870 is a pointless processor, but I feel the i5 750 and Phenom II 720/955 all have their place in the market, quads already showing superiority in games like GTA IV

also I feel the i5s clearly beat out phenom II in "real world" test like encoding, file compression, virus scanning, things I do all the time, so yes while the average user might not need it (heck they should just buy an Athlon II in that case) I'm sure many users here will see the value in this chip

I see it like this:
you have an AM2+/AM3 board and want to upgrade --> get a PII 965
you have a 775 board and want to upgrade ----------> get an i5 750 (after selling old rig, will cost bout the same as buying a Q9650 etc)

 

Nnnnnooooooooooooooooo

I'm in that last situation. No way I'll get an i5/i7 while I can get about the same performance with a Q9550/Q9650 and on top of that overclock it at around 4-4.2 GHz. And I think Phenoms II X3/X4 (if you're building a brand new rig) are better price/performance wise, plus the opportunities you'll have in a few months of upgrading from an X3 for example to an X4 955 @ 95W TDP or the X6's that are supposed to come in Q2/Q3 2010.
And even if you get an X4, performance will be very similar to an i5/i7 which doesn't have a visible upgrade path.

 

^ I'm not gonna argue anymore, I still disagree, but we clearly have different views I respect that