New Intel CPUs -- i5 and i7

[Freddie]

The new Lynnfield CPUs and motherboards are out!


REVIEWS

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3634

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...e-i5,2410.html

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/...i7_processors/

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=776

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Inte...d-P55-Chipset/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ield,2379.html

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...750_corei7870/

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/801

http://www.techspot.com/news/36131-I...or-Review.html

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=19979


NEWEGG LISTINGS

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115213

[rahven32]

Wow they are cheap! Was thinkin of building a new box soon might have to look into these.

[jak3676]

Just finished reading the Anandtech review myself. Time to dethrone the i7 920 and declare the i7 860 as the new king of performance/cost. For those that may need to squeeze a little more out of their budget the i5 750 looks to perform ver well too and it's almost $100 cheaper. Overall it looks like the 750 is just about equal to the 920 in performance and the 860 matches the old 940. The 750 is only about $200, while the 860 and 920 are $300. The 940 was over $500 for comparison purposes. The big cost savings though is that the new CPU's use a LGA-1156 motherboard instead of the more expensive LGA 1366. So even if you are looking at the 860 vs the 920, you'll end up with a cheaper overall system even though the CPU's are priced the same.

The advantages that the 920 has over the 860 just don't add up to much - triple channel memory is about it, and overall the 860's lower latency memory controll and improved bandwidth mean that you end up with about the same memory speed even though you only have 2 channels instead of 3. On the flip side the 860 has a better clock speed than the 920, and that generally translates into more speed anyway. If you really do want 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB, you can still find LGA 1156 motherboards that come with 6x memory slots. The only performance reason that Anand could find for the 1366 CPUs is in the very upper end of dual gfx cards. Twin 4870x2's or twin 295's will still perform better on the 1366 mobo's than they do on the 1156 mobo's.

The only real reason to buy a 920 anymore is because the LGA 1366 motherboard will support next years 6x core CPU's. So if you want to buy a more expensive 4x core system now, but have the potential option of dropping in a 6x core CPU in the future, then go ahead and spend the money. But for now we have a cheaper faster quad core setup with the 750 or 860. For the same performance that we had yesterday, we can now build a system for about $200 cheaper.

Now for AMD to releast the new 5xxx GPUs in a few days

[rahven32]

I'm kind of thinking the x58 boards are going to have to drop in price at least a little bit. It's to far off for them to be using the 6 core cpu's as a excuse to keep the current price. Also hoping AMD pulls something out of thin air. Without competition it's bad for us the end users, and they way it now is AMD is just out classed in almost every case.

[cmeche]

So, an i5 system would be about $200 cheaper. Throw that difference out the window, would you go with a 920 or a 750 for a new build to run 5 wows? The option to upgrade to a 6x core on a 1366 board is interesting. But, if the performance for multiboxing is similar between the two.....an extra $200 could go for a nice ssd in the future.

[rahven32]

That's my dilemma atm to. On one hand the x58 is future proof some what. However, the core 6 are going to run close to a grand I think. I don't see myself spending that cash in the near future. The actual I5 OC's pretty well from what I'm reading but no hyper thread =( I'm fairly certain a I5 will run alot better than the q6600 I'm using now. EVGA just announced their p55 boards today and they are pretty sweet. Waiting for people to run them threw their paces before I decide on a 920 or not. Really like the fact the intel board has bluetooth built in wish the other's would do the same. Not overly fond of intel boards.

If I don't go with the p55 im going to get the asrock x58 if I can ever catch it in stock. Very cheap x58 and from all the reviews a nice board. Not to mention it runs about the same price as some of the p55's.

[Freddie]

would you go with a 920 or a 750 for a new build to run 5 wows?

I didn't notice any benchmarks that are similar to running five WoWs, so I'd be afraid to guess.

There are benchmarks of applications that take advantage of multiple cores, but that type of application normally creates exactly one worker thread per logical core, and five WoWs don't match their threads to the processor in that way.

I wonder if the 750's lack of hyperthreading could be significant here.

Has anybody done a benchmark comparison of five WoWs on a 920 with/without hyperthreading?

[rahven32]

Yeah that was the other thing I was worried about. Multiboxing really could be hurt by not having hyperthreading. ATM with the Q6600 I'm using there isn't HT. It runs fairly well OC'd to 3000mhz. What I'm afraid of soon as I start to box one of the next generation mmo's it won't be possible without HT. WoW would run fine I'd think but you will be buying a sinking ship so to speak. But it's that way with any computer really. My goal when buying new computer stuff is to buy the one that will give me the most distance I can get and still be able to afford it. Or another way to look at it is don't buy a dummy tire when you know eventually your going to have to buy a real tire lol.

[Freddie]

There are a lot of things to speculate about here!

I agree that hyperthreading is a big question. Usually it helps, but sometimes it hurts and sometimes it hurts tremendously. Check out this benchmark. The stock 750 beats i7 -- even the i7 975! -- presumably due to its lack of hyperthreading.



(From http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/290...ng/index5.html.)

I suspect this result happened because all the code and data were cached. I suppose this is much less likely to happen with five WoWs but it would be helpful (like I said before) if somebody with an i7 920 would test the effect of hyperthreading with five WoWs.

Another question is upgradeability. If you're planning to buy a 6-core Gulftown then of course the 920 and LGA 1366 are the way to go. But Gulftown is supposed to cost $1000 or more and not many people will buy it.

If you're not planning to buy Gulftown, is 1366 really more upgradeable than 1156? A lot of people think so, but I really don't know why. Maybe you have good reasons for thinking so and you can tell me.

[Fizzler]

I wonder how the OC i7 920 compares. The 920 along with DDR3-1600 is super easy to OC.
Unless you really are strapped for cash I would take the 1366 any day just for the upgrade and hyperthread which are both important to me.