The Intel Core i7 860 Review

by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST

PAR2 Multithreaded Archive Recovery Performance

Par2 is an application used for reconstructing downloaded archives. It can generate parity data from a given archive and later use it to recover the archive

Chuchusoft took the source code of par2cmdline 0.4 and parallelized it using Intel’s Threading Building Blocks 2.1. The result is a version of par2cmdline that can spawn multiple threads to repair par2 archives. For this test we took a 708MB archive, corrupted nearly 60MB of it, and used the multithreaded par2cmdline to recover it. The scores reported are the repair and recover time in seconds.

Data Recovery - par2cmdline 0.4 Multithreaded

Our Par2 test actually puts both the 860 and 870 slightly ahead of the Core i7 975. It's clear that anything faster than a Core i5 750 in this case basically performs about the same. It looks like we're starting to be bottlenecked by our SSD.

Microsoft Excel 2007

Excel can be a very powerful mathematical tool. In this benchmark we're running a Monte Carlo simulation on a very large spreadsheet of stock pricing data.

Microsoft Excel 2007 SP1 - Monte Carlo Simulation

Sony Vegas Pro 8: Blu-ray Disc Creation

Although technically a test simulating the creation of a Blu-ray disc, the majority of the time in our Sony Vegas Pro benchmark is spend encoding the 25Mbps MPEG-2 video stream and not actually creating the Blu-ray disc itself.

Sony Vegas Pro 8 - Blu-ray Disc Image Creation (25Mbps MPEG-2)

Again the Core i7 860 pulls slightly ahead of the 920 and falls short of the 870, right where we'd expect it to land.

Sorenson Squeeze: FLV Creation

Another video related benchmark, we're using Sorenson Squeeze to convert regular videos into Flash videos for use on websites.

Sorenson Squeeze Pro 5 - Flash Video Creation

The 860 and the 920 keep trading positions, but as you'd expect given the similar price points - the two perform about the same.

WinRAR - Archive Creation

Our WinRAR test simply takes 300MB of files and compresses them into a single RAR archive using the application's default settings. We're not doing anything exotic here, just looking at the impact of CPU performance on creating an archive:

WinRAR 3.8 Compression - 300MB Archive

3D Rendering Performance Gaming Performance
Comments Locked

121 Comments

View All Comments

  • vol7ron - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    "No one with any knowledge of computers would buy the i7 860. They'd get the real deal, the i7 920." Unfortunately, there are 30W that beg to differ. No one with a sane mind would pass over the 860 so easily.
  • vol7ron - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I want one :) I think the 860 is the sweet spot for price/performance
  • jordanclock - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I'd say the 750 and 860 are both sweet spots, but for different budgets. They both are amazing performers for their price segment. After motherboard prices come down a tad more, there will be a pretty big gap between the 1156 and 1366. I really don't see the 920 lasting much longer in that kind of situation. Even the 940 is a little less attractive because the performance gains for the amount spent are really lacking when you go above the 870.
  • strikeback03 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link

    Has the 940 ever been attractive? Only for those who couldn't or wouldn't OC a 920.
  • the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    this benchmarks were taken with turbo overclocking on, so the lynnfield is overclocked at least 600 mhz, is illegal to say these are stock speed results, and compare with phenom 2 at stock speed.
    is unfair and biased.
  • Lonyo - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    A new name for snakeoil?

    These are stock results in terms of this is how the processor comes as stock - with turbo enabled.

    If they were overclocking the CPU outside of what is warrantied and allowed by Intel, THEN it would be unfair, but if the CPU is sold with the capability available and enabled to overclock itself, then it is not cheating or "illegal" to say that it's stock.

    If you really want to be amused, then feel free to go back to the 9800XT days of ATI, who are now owned by AMD.
    Back in those days, the Radeon 9800XT (made by the now AMD owned ATI) used to overclock itself, from a base clock of 412MHz up to 440MHz if possible.

    ATI (now owned by AMD) have already participated in this "illegal" automatic overclocking 'war' and now you say it's biased when Intel use a clever technology to improve performance.

    Personally I think it's a great feature, although what should really be done is an examination of its usefulness.
    Take some i5/i7 systems, put them in regular cases with stock and aftermarket heatsinks on them, and alter the environment in which they are used to see how good the turbo feature is when it's not a (presumably) open lab environment such as seen at Anandtech.
    That sort of suggestion from someone who claims "illegal" benchmark results might be more helpful than claiming it's "illegal" or "unfair".

    Is it illegal or unfair to benchmark an ATI card with DX10.1 and an NV card with only DX10 if the DX10.1 codepath in a game does nothing more than improve AA performance? No, it's not, it's taking advantage of a feature that only one side has implemented. To take away from what that side has done would be stupid. Deliberately crippling someone to prevent their potential from being show is stupid. Maybe we should put the best basketball players in wheelchairs so they can't perform as well as normal?
  • Chlorus - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    You kinda wonder when he will realize he's wasting all his time and attention on a frakking computer chip. "illegal"? Illegal with regards to what law?
  • the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    the law that says:
    you will not steal.


  • Chlorus - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    HOW IS THAT FUCKING STEALING!? How is using a stock feature stealing? You are aware that AMD is planning to use the same feature to?
  • DigitalFreak - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    If you guys would just ignore him and not reply to his posts, he'll go away.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now