The Intel Core i3 530 Review - Great for Overclockers & Gamers
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 22, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking Intel’s HD Graphics - It Works...Very Well
The coolest part of my job is being able to work with some ridiculously smart people. One such person gave me the idea to try overclocking the Intel HD graphics core on Clarkdale a few weeks ago. I didn’t get time to do it with the Core i5 661, but today is a different day.
Clarkdale offers three different GPU clocks depending on the model:
| Processor | Intel HD Graphics Clock |
| Intel Core i5-670 | 733MHz |
| Intel Core i5-661 | 900MHz |
| Intel Core i5-660 | 733MHz |
| Intel Core i5-650 | 733MHz |
| Intel Core i3-540 | 733MHz |
| Intel Core i3-530 | 733MHz |
| Intel Pentium G9650 | 533MHz |
The Core i5 661 runs it at the highest speed - 900MHz. The rest of the Core i5 and i3 processors pick 733MHz. And the Pentium G6950 has a 533MHz graphics clock.
Remember that the Intel HD Graphics die is physically separate from the CPU die on Clarkdale. It’s a separate 45nm package and I’m guessing it’s not all that difficult to make. If AMD can reliably ship GPUs with hundreds of shader processors, Intel can probably make a chip with 12 without much complaining.
So the theory is that these graphics cores are easily overclockable. I fired up our testbed and adjusted the GPU clock. It’s a single BIOS option and without any changes to voltage or cooling I managed to get our Core i3 530’s GPU running at 1200MHz. That’s a 64% overclock!
I could push the core as high as 1400MHz and still get into Windows, but the system stopped being able to render any 3D games at that point.
I benchmarked World of Warcraft with the Core i3 running at three different GPU clocks to show the potential for improvement:
| CPU (Graphics Clock) | World of Warcraft |
| Intel Core i5 661 (900MHz gfx) | 14.8 fps |
| Intel Core i3 530 (733MHz gfx) | 12.5 fpx |
| Intel Core i3 530 (900MHz gfx) | 14.2 fps |
| Intel Core i3 530 (1200MHz gfx) | 19.0 fps |
A 64% overclock resulted in a 52% increase in performance. If Intel wanted to, it could easily make its on-package GPU a lot faster than it is today. I wonder if this is what we’ll see with Sandy Bridge and graphics turbo on the desktop.
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marc1000 - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
its interesting how close in performance the e8600 is to the i3... of course you loose some power efficiency but if you already have a good discrete GPU and a e8600 (or another older penryn clocked to e8600 levels, as it is my case), then none of the new CPU's are ground-breaking deals... they are faster, of course, but they are also expensive. not funny. going from a P4 to a Penryn was really great, but from a Penryn to these new ones... its just "good".Grooveriding - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Any chance of seeing some comparisons of this chip at 4ghz vs an i7 920 at 4ghz. I'd love to get an idea of how it compares clock for clock in gaming against the 1366 platform.Be interesting to see if it's better just getting this if you're a gamer.
cmdrdredd - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
2.66Ghz i7 920 vs 2.93Ghz i3 530 is already there. The 2.66Ghz i7 is on average 10fps faster. Overclocking both to 4Ghz would have the same results if not even furthering the gap. Why? Because a slower clock speed CPU is already faster. So equaling the clock speed doesn't mean equaling performance.strikeback03 - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Even better, if they could add overclocked results they already have to Bench.ltcommanderdata - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I'm wondering if overclocking the IGP's shader units overclocks the memory controller as well since they are on the same die? That would help explain the good performance scaling. As well, was power consumption significantly different with the IGP at 1200MHz? If not, then Intel should definitely have clocked their IGPs higher. Catching up to current gen IGPs from nVidia and ATI is noteworthy for an Intel IGP, but presumably nVidia and ATI have their next gen IGPs right around the corner and Intel's IGP doesn't push new performance boundaries.IntelUser2000 - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
No, the IGP is on its own clock domain. You can overclock the iGPU seperately from everything, even the base clock. On the motherboards which allow overclocking of the iGPU on Clarkdale, you don't have multiplier options, but a straightforward frequency adjustment.Abhilash - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
sysmark is absurdAbhilash - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=112&...">http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=112&...karlkesselman - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
hi,On page 2, Load Power Consumption you have i870 using less power than i750. This can't be. It's either a misprint or the "load" test doesn't fully stress the i870 or maybe some hardware misconfiguration.
Then there is the WoW test.
i750 has 92 fps
i530 has 77 fps
and
i530 (OC @ 4 GHz) has also 92 fps
We know that WoW only uses 2 cores so i750 must be having turbo boost enabled running @ 3.2 GHz. That explains why it gets 92 fps. But then the i530 @ 4 GHz gets the same fps. This is either a mistake (was the test running the same hardware?) or i530 is less efficient then i750 (at least running WoW; maybe because of the memory controller and/or the 8 MB L3 cache or both?).
Also in this case (WoW test) it would be interesting if we could see the power consumption during the test (i750 compared to i530).
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Our 870 has always used slightly less power than our 750 sample. A while ago Intel did away with having a single voltage for each product shipped. In my experience, the higher end chips are usually the ones that can run at the lowest voltages.All of our Core i7/i5 numbers are run with Turbo enabled, but remember that Clarkdale's memory performance isn't as good as Lynnfield. We see this manifest itself in more than just WoW. If you have the money, you're better off with Lynnfield. But at $113 you're at nearly half the price of the cheapest Lynnfield.
Take care,
Anand