The Intel Broadwell Desktop Review: Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C Tested (Part 1)
by Ian Cutress on June 2, 2015 7:45 AM ESTTest Setup
As we mentioned in our introduction, Intel's 9-series chipset were designed from the start to allow future compatibility with Broadwell. As a result with a BIOS update we're able to drop these processors into our existing MSI and ASUS Z97 boards, though not without some pre-release BIOS teething issues.
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel i7-5775C, 4C/8T Intel i5-5675C, 4C/4T |
| Motherboard | MSI Z97A Gaming 6 ASUS Z97 Pro |
| DRAM | G.Skill RipjawsZ 4x4GB DDR3-1866 C9 at DDR3-1600 |
| Low End GPU | Integrated ASUS R7 240 2GB DDR3 Dual Graphics with R7 240 |
| Mid Range GPU | MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB |
| High End GPU | MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold |
| Storage Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Operating System | Windows 7.1 64-bit, Build 7601 |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL CLC |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to AMD for providing us with the R9 290X 4GB GPUs.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs and the R7 240 DDR3 GPU.
Thank you to ASRock and ASUS for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill and Corsair for providing us with memory.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Load Delta Power Consumption
We'll start things off with a look at power consumption. Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single NVIDIA GTX 770 configuration with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency.
We are reporting the power consumption difference when idle and during an initial OCCT load. This is slightly skewed by the adjustment up the efficiency chain of our power supply, showing lower power CPUs consuming a little more, but despite this the qualitative comparison is a still a good place to start.
Despite our test being almost qualitative, it is exciting to see that in our power consumption limit test both CPUs score around their TDP values.
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Gothmoth - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
well we can dream.i could use more cores.
i use heavy multithreaded applications and do heavy multitasking.
yet i have to live with 10% better performance per cpu generation. :(
haswell-e is the only choice when i want to upgrade.
but it runs hot and i have no use at all for internal graphics.
so why not making another CPU tailored for people like us?
i mean intel makes enough different CPUs anyway.
Gothmoth - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
ah that reads wrong... i know that haswell-e has no internal graphics.what i meant was... haswell-e runs hot and for the other cpus like broadwell i have no use of the internall GPU.
DCide - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
All this wishful thinking on your part tells me you probably don't have a very strong, actual NEED. Because if you did, you'd be ecstatic about the 5820K or 5960X. They run at 4GHz all day long with standard air cooling and no knowledge of overclocking (I just use ASRock's SLOWEST default overclock settings in the BIOS setup).It's almost humorous when I read these benchmarks, because they so understate the true, completely stable performance of the 5960X without doing any extra work setting it up. It's nearly twice as fast as the 4790K in practice (in fact it *is* about twice as fast when you consider how easily and quickly the 4790K throttles in a typical configuration).
I realize there are situations where generating more heat in the room matters. But if your multitasking were genuinely heavy enough to warrant the upgrade to 6 or 8 cores, you'd be foolish not to take advantage of the great solution that's available right now.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Double the cores means double the power consuption. There's no way around this, except making each core run slower.. which diminishes the benefit of having them. If Haswell-E runs too hot for you, no other chip Intel would reasonably want to produce right now would satisfy you.nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
But haswell-E is still on 22nm, not 14nm.nevcairiel - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Then wait for Broadwell-E.Azurael - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Why would you want to invest in 3 sticks of DDR4 RAM which will bring nearly no performance benefit and a massively overpriced motherboard for an extra couple of cores? It's not the cost of the Haswell-Es, or even their power consumption that bugs me - I suspect dual channel DDR3 is perfectly adequate for 6 cores alone given that it is apparently adequate for 4+GPU.Still, it makes my investment in a 2500K which has been running at 4.5GHz on stock voltage for the last 3 and a half years on the cheapest Z68 board I could buy sound rather good. I think I'd struggle to gain more than 20% in performance for the outlay of buying a new motherboard and CPU. I built a 4770K-based rig for a friend last year, it won't scrape past 4.2GHz. I'm sure IPC + HT + Faster RAM makes it faster than my rig, but certainly not in any noticeable fashion.
DCide - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Obviously it wouldn't matter to you. You didn't even bother to go with an i7.But for those to whom it does matter it's the biggest step up we've seen in a desktop CPU in a long time. The additional RAM and motherboard cost is trivial to those for whom the extra performance provides more than amusement.
Azurael - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
You're correct - to me, it seems adequate for video editing and running Android builds... I'm sure in your 'elite' i7 world, things are far quicker. My issue is not with the fact that Intel offers higher spec or more expensive parts. Obviously, there would be no need for 18-core Xeons in this hypothetical world. My issue the fact that they artificially constrain the 'mid' range dual channel architecture to 4 cores and lump us with an IGP that's never going to get used taking up more die space than the extra couple of cores would just because they don't have any competition.Azurael - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
And by the way, a ~84W TDP CPU is going to throttle when overclocked - especially when running AVX loads. If you haven't found the current limits in the BIOS, you probably deserve to believe your expensive 6-core running at only 4GHz is twice as fast as a properly set up 4790K :P