The Clarkdale Review: Intel's Core i5 661, i3 540 & i3 530
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 4, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
And this is where everything changes. While our Photoshop test won't keep four cores busy 100% of the time, it's enough to give the quad-core CPUs an advantage. Here the Core i5 661 is around the speed of a Q9400 but nowhere near the similarly priced Lynnfield Core i5 750.
The Core i3 540/530 are valuable as they are both able to outperform AMD's similarly priced Athlon II X4 630. The 661 doesn't make sense here but for the price, the i3 530/540 look promising.
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
Video encoding is where you need more cores, and this is where the Core i5 661 really loses out in terms of value. It's the same price as a Core i5 750 but it's clearly slower. Turbo isn't saving the 661.
The Core i3 540 and 530 however look competitive. They're able to perform at around the same level as AMD's Athlon II X4 630, while drawing much less power.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 encoder to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
Competitive in DivX encoding, yes. But in our x264 encoding test, these Clarkdales just don't make sense. If you do a lot of x264 video encoding you're going to want Lynnfield or a quad-core Athlon II/Phenom II.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
Rounding out our video encoding tests Windows Media Encoder 9 doesn't really show us anything different. The Core i5 661 is slower than it should be given its price, and here even the i3s lose out. If you do a lot of encoding, you want four cores. Simple as that.
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Jamahl - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
If this is a sign of things to come from intels 32nm, AMD must be laughing their asses off.Every one of these cpu's is an overpriced piece of garbage.
ereavis - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Phenom II X2 550 should be on this list, it's the direct competitor to the i3 -- dual core with real cache. It beats the Athlon II X4 processors and the Athlon II X2 don't even belong.ereavis - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
blasted no edit function. The 550 is also about the same price point.Guess I didn't combine criticism with the fact that this review was exactly what I've been waiting for and very well written, I like the added IGP page as I'm sitting on a 785 IGP while discrete cards are in between releases. All of which may get passed on to my mom's dying Sempron if an I3 deal pops up.
Also minor correction, the Phenom II 925 is an X4. Where are the release dates?
SilentSin - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I second your question to Intel about the pricing of the 32nm i5 chips...who the hell is going to buy that? The i3's are looking pretty sweet as an alternative to an AMD HTPC platform at that low price point, though. March should make for an interesting competition once AMD launches their new RD890G (4350 based) chipsets. I'm guessing those will thoroughly trounce the GMA part on these chips as well as having quite a few features that the Intel HD stuff can't do, but at least Intel put something up that isn't completely laughable for once.Cogman - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
x264 is NOT a codec. Let me repeat that, x264 is NOT a codec. It is an ENCODER. The video output from x264 is in the H.264 standard (or codec if you like).Saying that x264 is an alternative to H.264 is retarded. It isn't an alternative, it USES the H.264 standard. Its like trying to say that mySQL is an alternative to the Ansi SQL standard. It isn't an alternative, it is an implementation of it.
puffpio - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
hahaha..that always gets on my nerves too!but you can take it as a compliment that x264's popularity is strong enough that people mistake it for h264..
people make the same mistake with divx, kleenex, qtip, xerox, etc...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
My apologies for sounding like a fool :-) I've updated the text. I just meant that it was an alternative to closed source H.264 encoders but my phrasing was absolutely horrendous for that purpose.Thanks for pointing out the error :)
Take care,
Anand
proneax - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I would like to see you measure the power consumption on the DH55TC using the integrated graphics.Legitreviews shows Idle/Load of 49/99W for the 661 in that setup.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Agreed - I'll do it as soon as I'm back in the office. Just gotta survive CES :)Take care,
Anand
medi01 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Dual core 3.3Ghz CPU + Radeon 5870 consuming only 110 watt at load???