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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
343 Comments
View All Comments
mschira - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I wonder if a 4xPCIe RAID adapter directly connected to a PCIe slot that is connected to the CPU is any faster than it is for a Core i7 920....Cheers
Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Less than a one percent difference in my testing so far.Jamahl - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Why do your benches falsely state 2.66ghz when they are clearly running faster than that?rbbot - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
lol - I've just been berating a reviewer on another site for benchmarking with turbo off! In that case the review wasn't targeted at an overclocking audience, but even here I can't see the argument for benchmarking with it disabled.Yes you do need to turn it off for extreme overclocking, but this review is comparing the chips in their stock configuration and stock configuration is on.
maxxcool - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
As for false, well gee, you were told it was on. Didn't you read that? or are you snakeoils brother?goinginstyle - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
They list the base CPU speeds, it was discussed clearly in the article that turbo is enabled, it is not a false statement for reporting what you will purchase. Apparently you just want to flame bait here and I hope they ban you and the two other nut jobs.rgallant - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
people see what they want to see I guess-I wanted to see the multi gpu test, 1156 vs 1366 , clock vs clock ,fps vs fps ,16x vs 8x on die , not one chip overclocking it's self unless you show the numbers for turbo on and off, what if the 1366 mb used for the benches came out of the box and by the default bios overclocked the i7 920 to 3.8 ,would those numbers be included as stock out of the box. I don't think so , that feature would be turned off on the mb.for the benches. 1156 numbers could mean nothing really.
-all cpu's should been locked at 3.6 at least for the multi gpu test or one test anyways.
-the 8x 8x lane issue is the only crippled feature on the new chips ,and it seems to take a back seat to the $50.00 savings for a mb for a $600.00 i7 870 chip ,or $900.00 CND .lol On sept.05 my local shop had the i7 920 D0 and the i7 860 both at $345 CND.
-good review as always ,just missing that part for me , looking to commit on a 1156 or a 1366 upgrade.
maxxcool - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Yeah, you got to get rid of snakeoil, he is quiet the troll on the TechReport forums as well. He has been banned from several sites already.andrenb91 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
i5 is faster than PII's! but gotta wait for the lower end ones come outbecause these $190+ chips aren't the one ones that brings up revenue for companies like amd or intel...of course intel has the upper hand here, it could use as a propaganda do deliver up the slower parts. Amd has value and some good cpus at the lower end... that ones bring profits to the company,amd strategy is looking good for now, but it's design must change (native dual/tripe core versions of Phenom II) and the die size have to get smaller to compete next year (against 32nm low end ones...) well I use amd budget ones, for what I do is good enough, ( thin about $400 pc in USA, live in Brazil...) still, I can play some 40fps games and do some video encoding with my gpu,my point is, amd still have the lower-end market, the problem is, if were some of that people that think pentium is a company name, I would by the pentium cpus instead of amd strange cpus. that's why intel sells a lot more desktops and notebooks, of course the performace is great at some 700+ pcs and laptops, but amd has the lower-end, and there it is what amd is looking for: market share, and taht will pump amd back again by 2011 with its fusion apu, intel already controls 80% of mainstream,and high-end markets, but doesn't have a player for the lower-end, thats what I'm looking for a good old intel cpu that beats p2x3 or athlonIIx4 by intel at about $100. then I'll buy my next cpu, probably an intel, or continue with Amd, time will tell...
andrenb91 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
sorry for my english and, these benchmarks are for windows only, over linux intel i5 will not have this crazy advantage at all, well but who of us uses linux anyway?(don't lie to me, it's a dual boot...) well my system specs are: phenomII x3 705e,4gb ddr3 1333,hd 4650 basicaly a low-end to mainstream..