The Intel Core i7 860 Review

Home CPUs

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/18/2009 12:00:00 AM
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.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Retouch Artists Speed Test

While the Core i5 750 couldn't beat the i7 920, the 860 can. Thanks to Hyper Threading and a higher base clock speed, Lynnfield proves to be an able performer.

SYSMark 2007 Performance Video Encoding Performance

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SGI Octane III... by mapesdhs on Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Blimey, even I'm surprised sometimes...

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_rel...">http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroo...releases...
http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/octaneIII/inde...">http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/octaneIII/inde...
http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4177.pdf">http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4177.pdf

Without graphics, up to 20 x quad-core i7 XEON and 960GB RAM.

With graphics included (various NVIDIA Quado FX options and CUDA), 2 x
quad-core i7 XEON, 144GB max RAM, 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16, 4 x PCIe 2.0 x8
and one PCIe 2.0 x4. Dual-GigE or Infiniband included.

There's also an Atom configuration (19 dual-core Atoms, 38GB RAM).
Atom does very well for performance/watt, attractive to datacentres
for web servers, databases, etc.

Renderfarm anyone? 8)

Ian.

PS. Nothing to do with the earlier MIPS/IRIX Octane/Octane2 systems of course.

mapesdhs

no thanks intel by papapapapapapapababy on Monday, September 21, 2009

THE stupid upgrading path.

NO SATA 6 GB /s...
NO USB 3.0...
NO PCI Express 3.0...

NO THANKS. NEXT.

papapapapapapapababy

missing parts ? by haplo602 on Monday, September 21, 2009

Where are Athlon II X4s in the graphs ? Where's Phenom II X2 BE ?

Where is a 785G mobo roundup ? I am still hearing only i5/i7/P55. This is frustrating. You are not keeping up with your name. Drop the Intel hype and do something for the normal people that try to build computers on a budget.

haplo602

Two issues with overclocking Lynnfield by sicofante on Monday, September 21, 2009

Sorry if this has been asked or commented before (I haven't read the full 11 pages).

I build workstations for the animation and video industry and I factory-overclock them. Bloomfield has been very well received by my customers and I'm really happy with it. Now I'm studying Lynnfield and from what I've read, I don't feel quite comfortable with how Lynnfield is overclocked. Here are my two main issues:

1. Anand mentioned in past articles that overclocking Lynnfield would imply overclocking the PCIe bus, since the controller is integrated. How does this affect graphics and other cards? I'm not talking only about gaming cards but also Quadros or RAID controller cards.

2. Also, it seems Lynnfield OC needs voltage tweaking. This sounds not as nice as Bloomfield stock voltage overclocking, but what are the real consequences and drawbacks (if any) of voltage rising?

Thanks in advance for answering these two issues and thanks to the Anandtech's staff for such in depth articles.

sicofante

RE: Two issues with overclocking Lynnfield by ggathagan on Tuesday, September 22, 2009

This seems to get lost frequently, but Lynnfield is all about the mid-tier market.

Going down the Lynnfield road for the workstations you describe would be a BAAAAD idea.

Your industry is also one of the few that, in most reviewers opinions, has benefited from the triple-channel memory capabilities of the X58 platform.

ggathagan

Price increase is getting crazy! by 7Enigma on Monday, September 21, 2009

It's been going on for a while now but the price increase for minimal performance increase is getting pretty silly. Back during the <1000MHz days a 100MHz bump was nothing to sneeze at, and even during the 1-2GHz days a 100-200MHz bump wasn't that bad. But honestly they (both AMD and INTEL) have gotten rediculous with their gouging of the higher end. Honestly ~130MHz difference between the 870 and the 860?!?

Their only saving grace (for stock clockers, or very moderate OC'ers) is the higher turbo levels of the 870, but again in most situations (that is those that do not task 3-4 cores simultaneously) the clock difference between the 860 and 870 is <150MHz, which on a ~3.5GHz core is virtually nil.

7Enigma

RE: Price increase is getting crazy! by strikeback03 on Monday, September 21, 2009

They have used pricing like this in the past, just that there were usually several options in the more sane ($300 and less) range before the final few clock bumps were disproportionately expensive.

strikeback03

RE: Price increase is getting crazy! by 7Enigma on Monday, September 21, 2009

But in the past the performance jump was greater. We're talking a (theoretical) 4% difference between the 870 and 860!

7Enigma

RE: Price increase is getting crazy! by strikeback03 on Monday, September 21, 2009

When I bought my current E6600 it was a little over $300. The E6700 was over $500 for a 266MHz bump, so technically 10% but still nothing to write home about for the money. If the 870 were unlocked that price might be justified, as of now I agree with you that it is not so much.

strikeback03

Phenom vs Athlon by Proteusza on Monday, September 21, 2009

Athlon X4: 300m transistors, no L3 cache, performs about 90% as fast as a Phenom X4
Phenom X4: 758m transistors, 8mb L3 cache (or is it 6?)

Does anyone think AMD isnt getting their money's worth out of the 458 million transistors used on the Phenom II to provide the L3 cache? I mean, more than double the manufacturing complexity for a small increase in performance?

Proteusza

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