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
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
And we're back down to utter dominance yet again. The i5 750 is 12.6% faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE and 18.8% cheaper. Harder, better, faster stronger.
Blender 2.48a
Blender is an open source 3D modeling application. Our benchmark here simply times how long it takes to render a character that comes with the application.
To get Blender to perform right on Lynnfield we actually had to update our graphics drivers. It looks like the on-die PCIe does require the latest NVIDIA/ATI drivers to work properly. The results aren't unusual; Intel has done very well in these tests and Lynnfield continues to dominate. The i5 750 is a bit slower than the 920 (and Q9650) thanks to its missing HT support.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
The single threaded benchmark tells us everything we need to know. The Core i5 750 and i7 870 are two of the fastest processors we've ever tested at single-threaded applications. Very few microprocessors will be able to retire instructions from a single thread as quickly as Lynnfield. This is actually very noticeable in simply using the OS. Many tasks still aren't multithreaded but they execute very, very fast on Lynnfield.
Crank up the threads and Lynnfield is still competitive. Because it's missing Hyper Threading, the i5 750 is barely faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE. Although I understand Intel wanting to segment its product line, it seems that the i5's missing HT goes a bit too far.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
We see the same results under POV-Ray. Regardless of thread count, Lynnfield delivers the best performance possible short of a $1000 CPU.
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Ann3x - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
1/ There is no chance that any of these chip can run safely with no fan.2/ You dont get huge temperature increases if you dont overvolt, just clock changes result in very small temperature changes. look at the article you linked. The 3 new chips use EXACTLY the same power despite their differing clock speeds.
3/ New energy saving technology works with overclock just like it does with stock clock ed CPUs (eg energy states, my i7 is overclocked to 4ghz on stock volts, when its not needed it clock down - same end effect as these new chips (albeit slightly less elegant)).
This whole fuss about turbo mode is just marketing gumph and yet people are totally sucked in by the hype.
coconutboy - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
1- I never said anything about running the CPU w/o a fan. Fanless watercooling is an option, as is quiet low rpm fans.2- Clocking w/o increasing voltage does increase heat and whether or not you consider that to be a significant amount depends on the cooling solution you use. I made no claim that OC'd temps would increase as much as overvolting.
Your opinion about the validity of turbo mode is just that, you opinion. You and I can agree to disagree.
titanium001 - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
I was excited to see the article, but was left wondering and scratching my head when gaming performance was evaluated. I didn't see any 1920 x 1200 or 2560 x 1600 comparisons anywhere. Do the i7 800 series take a significant performance hit in these settings. I guess everything can't be delivered until a full in depth review. Have to just wait. I'll reserve my judgment about the 800 series until then, for now, it's just another proc. Thanks for the initial preview Anandtech.com.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
Have a look at the SLI/CF Multi-GPU Gaming page, I include some GPU limited tests at the bottom of that page.At higher resolutions P55, X58 and even Phenom II/790FX all perform the same if you're GPU limited. The PCIe limitations of P55/Lynnfield only come into play when you're running in multi-GPU mode because the x16 interface gets broken up into a pair of x8s.
Take care,
Anand
NoobyDoo - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
... remember when C2D was released ?coconutboy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
After thoroughly reading a lot of the articles at Toms, Anand, xbit etc, Lynnfield looks great and has been worth the wait. However, it's not an absolute sell as a gamer box IMO. My g/f and I have been waiting to build a pair of new gaming computers, but wanted to see what i5 had to offer first. Now that NDAs are down, the $30-70 savings for p55 versus comparable x58 mobos is great, but some things about i5 still make me want an i7 920 instead.My g/f and I plan on buying a pair of GTX 275s, one for each computer. Then later on as our systems age, we'll put both 275s in one box and buy a newer vid card for the other system. We also moderately overclock our CPUs (3.2-3.4 would be what I expect for a i7 920) to boost performance w/o shortening the lifespan too much because our gamer boxes usually end up moving down the line in our home network to become servers or some such.
Taking into account everything I've been reading at hardware sites thus far, we'll likely build one Lynnfield and one i7 for our gaming rigs. I expect one of the current gamer computers we build will migrate to become a VMware machine later on which means an i7 920 w/ (eventually) 24GBs of RAM is very attractive. The ability to use a 6 core CPU later on counts for a lot as well.
coconutboy - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
edit- I meant to be comparing an mildly overclocked i7 920 @ stock voltage and 3.3-3.4GHz versus an i7 860/870, not an i5. I'd often prefer the 920 (but not always of course) for my uses.thebeastie - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Such a good complete review, EXCEPT there is no information of how much power the CPU used with it was hard overclocked to its 4.2Ghz mark.With its intergrated PCIe 100million transistor count controller inside the CPU this would of been really interesting info.
Gary Key - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
The system power utilized (measured at the wall) was 301W for the 4.2GHz overclock on the 870 under an eight thread 100% load test on the board.justme2009 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Why are you overhyping this garbage? I'm waiting for Clarkdale. I'm still ticked off that Intel caved to the manufacturers and held off on releasing it, we were supposed to have it in the 4th quarter of this year, now it will be first half of 2010.This new nehalem (even if it's for desktops) will be nothing compared to the mobile nehalem next year.
My only other question is, why the hell has Clarkdale/Arrendale information been buried? There hasn't been a peep from anyone about it since February.