The Intel Core i7 860 Review

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

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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  • strikeback03 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link

    In previous tests Anand has used the fastest validated speed for each platform, so 1066 for Bloomfield and 1333 for Lynnfield. Not that it probably makes much difference in anything but synthetic benchmarks.
  • Scheme - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    Woah, did you forget to take your ritalin last night?
  • mesiah - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    Anand, can't you ban this guy? You have to be tired of watching him come on here and verbally assault any person he doesn't agree with, including yourself. Do everyone a favor and toss him to the curb.
  • jonup - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link

    Noooo! This would be too cruel. We need a joker to make us laugh from time to time.
  • tim851 - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    Let me guess, you have an i7 920...?

    Of course the 860 ran at higher clock speeds, why would Anand underclock it? It was compared to the 920 because they share the same price point. That is until you add the motherboard, then the i7 is like 100$ more expensive.

    And Anand summed it up nicely: the 1366 platform is now for people who need hexa-cores someday or who think SLI/Crossfire is reasonable.

    Oh, and if the P55 Platform is "braindamaged", then apparently all major tech sites are in on the conspiracy.
  • jordanclock - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    What do you mean by "inferior memory?"

    And of course the 860 was running at a higher clock rate: That's how it is designed to run. Even without Turbo.
  • TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I don't have a problem with the 860 running at higher clock speeds, but if the architecture were better, it would never lose to a processor running at lower clock speeds.

    In short, the architecture is not clearly better. It's worse, the margin is the only thing worth discussing.
  • TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I should have said, i7 920 still outperformed it in a few benchmarks.

    Pity there isn't an edit.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    The basic architecture of Lynnfield is the same as Bloomfield. The differences are the topology of the platform (PCI on die instead of in the chipset, 2 mem controllers instead of 3, no QPI in Lynnfield). The cores are exactly the same, the cache is exactly the same.
  • jordanclock - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I have yet to see any real world scenarios where triple channel memory "really shines." The inclusion or exclusion of a triple channel set up would account for variations of about 1% either way. In other words, less than the margin of error.

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