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
Windows 7 Gaming Performance
Our Bench suite is getting a little long in the tooth, so I added a few more gaming tests under Windows 7 with a new group of processors. We'll be adding some of these tests to Bench in the future but the number of datapoints is obviously going to be small as we build up the results.
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman is an Unreal Engine 3 game and a fairly well received one at that. Performance is measured using the built in benchmark at the highest image quality settings without AA enabled.
Pretty much everything performs well here. Technically this is one of those exceptions where the i5 661 actually performs like it's priced. The i3s continue to be competitive with similarly priced AMD options.
Dragon Age Origins is another very well received game. The 3rd person RPG gives our CPUs a different sort of workload to enjoy:
Many games these days can actually use more than two cores, and thus we see the Lynnfield/Bloomfield chips scale ridiculously well here. As such, the i5 661 loses its appeal since it's priced like a Lynnfield.
The i3s however do very well. They outperform the similarly priced AMD CPUs and are just behind the Phenom II X4 925. They're definitely a lot faster than the old Core 2 Duo E8600 despite the clock speed deficiency.
Dawn of War II is a beautiful RTS that we've used in our GPU reviews for some time now. It scales will core count reasonably well but also shows the strengths of the new Clarkdales:
Again, the i5 661 isn't fast enough for its price but the i3s are great.
World of Warcraft needs no introduction. An absurd number of people play it, so we're here to benchmark it. Our test favors repeatability over real world frame rates, so our results here will be higher than in the real world with lots of server load. But what our results will tell you is what the best CPU is to get for playing WoW:
It's surprising how little difference there is between the i5 661 and the i3 540. It's almost as if Intel knew that the nomenclature had to exaggerate whatever little difference there was.
The i5 661 does well here, but the most bang for your buck comes from the i3s which even outperform the Phenom II X4 965. If you want an affordable gaming CPU, the Core i3 is where it's at.
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Marcin - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
2D loadAnand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
The Radeon HD 5870 is quite power efficient if it's not running a 3D app. Our load tests were done using our x264 encoding benchmark to stress the CPU. That's why I used the 5870 as a companion in those benchmarks - makes overall system power consumption lower so we can better see differences between CPUs. Good job AMD :)Take care,
Anand
yacoub - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Intel gives us this crap instead of 32nm P55.DrMrLordX - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Can we see results on an i3 530 instead? Some people with ES chips are reporting that i3s are not good for much of anything over 4 ghz. Also, the vcore on your 4.8 ghz is pretty high, even with water cooling. I would not want to run an i3 at that vcore on a daily basis.The phase results are really interesting, but I have to wonder how well this chip scales given the memory speed limitations you run into at higher BCLK.
Spoelie - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
First CPU-Z screenshot on the overclocking page shows CPU @ 1.3GHz, I don't think this is the correct shot?Rajinder Gill - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Speedstep and Turbo enbaled. The full load speed is 26X149 BCLK, so around 3874MHz..Spoelie - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
True, comment on gaming benchmarks:" the Core i3s are good gaming chips - especially when you consider how far you can overclock them. "
But how would you know, not having any in-house?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I've heard some very good initial results but I will be able to confirm when I get back from CES :)Take care,
Anand
marc1000 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Suddenly it all makes sense. Intel would never enable 1080p decoding on Atom D510 not because of technical issues, but simply because it would kill the market for i3 even before it was released. The HTPC market does not need the i3 brute-power, but this is the only platform that will have HDMI and 1080p. If Atom D510 could do 1080p and had HDMI output then the choice for a HTPC would be a no-brainer. And excuse me, but I already have a gaming rig, so all I want right now is a HTPC to play PC content on my TV. And I won't buy a core i3 to do that, but I would buy a decent Atom board if it had the required HDMI and 1080p... so, for me, no HTPC for now...Kjella - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
That is why the old Atom + ION exists, excellent setup with 1080p acceleration and HDMI out. If you don't want it, wait until AMD or VIA/nVidia manages to work something out.