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
Final Words
I like the Core i3 530. It’s the first real alternative Intel offers to AMD’s Phenom II X2 and Athlon II X4 processors. And dare I say that it’s perfectly competitive? With Clarkdale I get the feeling that Intel is actually trying to compete with AMD, instead of run them into the ground.
If you need a fast dual-core processor, the Core i3 530 is right for you. If you need affordable threaded performance, the Athlon II X4 is a better option. Intel attempts to sweeten the deal with TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming support, but ultimately what we have here is a chip that is truly competitive.
The i5s continue to be priced far too high, but that’s where they should be. Intel has a much larger sales and marketing budget than AMD, so put those sales folks to work. AMD (and Intel) offer better value than the entire dual-core i5 line, so it’s up to Intel's marketing to sell those more expensive chips. To those in the know, you'll ignore them almost entirely.
The i3 is the sensible solution. It’s not too perfect. You’re still better off with an Athlon II X4 if you are doing a lot of video encoding or offline 3D rendering, but it’s great for the rest of the market. You lose turbo mode but honestly, with only two cores, you don’t really need it. Instead, just be happy with the fact that you can push nearly 4GHz with minimal effort and without even swapping out the stock heatsink/fan. The lack of AES-NI support keeps the i3 from being the otherwise perfect chip for corporate use, a clever but unfortunate move by Intel.
The competitive angle is even more interesting when you realize that the majority of the dual-core CPUs that AMD sells today are all much cheaper than the Core i3. Maybe it’s Intel playing nice for the FTC, but it almost looks like the two companies have conspired to compete without stepping on each others toes.
Between $60 - $100 you have the Athlon II X2. Then at $100 - $130 you can go with either an i3 or an Athlon II X4. Between $130 and $200 you have a number of Phenom II X4 choices that make sense. And at $200 and above it’s all Lynnfield/Bloomfield. Everyone gets a piece of the pie, Intel just gets the more expensive price points (which to AMD’s credit, aren’t high volume sellers anyway).
AMD technically has the best product at one of the most important price points - $150. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but the competition here just seems...clean.
There you have it. If you want a dual-core processor at around $130, the Core i3 530 is as good as it gets. Competition without killing AMD. I like it.
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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