Intel's Core i7 870 & i5 750, Lynnfield: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 8, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
And we're back down to utter dominance yet again. The i5 750 is 12.6% faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE and 18.8% cheaper. Harder, better, faster stronger.
Blender 2.48a
Blender is an open source 3D modeling application. Our benchmark here simply times how long it takes to render a character that comes with the application.
To get Blender to perform right on Lynnfield we actually had to update our graphics drivers. It looks like the on-die PCIe does require the latest NVIDIA/ATI drivers to work properly. The results aren't unusual; Intel has done very well in these tests and Lynnfield continues to dominate. The i5 750 is a bit slower than the 920 (and Q9650) thanks to its missing HT support.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
The single threaded benchmark tells us everything we need to know. The Core i5 750 and i7 870 are two of the fastest processors we've ever tested at single-threaded applications. Very few microprocessors will be able to retire instructions from a single thread as quickly as Lynnfield. This is actually very noticeable in simply using the OS. Many tasks still aren't multithreaded but they execute very, very fast on Lynnfield.
Crank up the threads and Lynnfield is still competitive. Because it's missing Hyper Threading, the i5 750 is barely faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE. Although I understand Intel wanting to segment its product line, it seems that the i5's missing HT goes a bit too far.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
We see the same results under POV-Ray. Regardless of thread count, Lynnfield delivers the best performance possible short of a $1000 CPU.
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Ben90 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Was reading it pretty casually thinking it was just a preview because i didnt think the NDA lifted yet.... then i saw a next page... looked at the tab and it has like 20 pages OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! ITS OUT LOL....Im gonna try really really hard to read the article before i go to the gaming performance though...prolly wont make itLashek - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
you compare it to the Q6600 a lot in the text, but no comparison with an overclocked Q6600 is made in the benches...If you have figures of an overclocked Q6600, could you add them? all over the web these question are asked but business leaders who own these web sites dont want to challenge a overclocked core 2 duo,and quads,or is it politics?
coldpower27 - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
You will have to compare an overclocked I750 or i860 to the Q6600 as that would only be fair, no sense doing a stock vs overclocked comparison.It is well known you can equal todays stock performance by overclocking to some degree, but if your going to compare overclock then you need to overclock both processors.
Q6600 will be destroyed by i750 and i860 if you compare perf/watt however.
Joshaze - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
Anand,When testing World of Warcraft what processAffinityMask value where you using?
The default value for this variable does not take advantage of all cores on the Core i7 processors.
Here is the article discussing the CVAR: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi...">http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi...
The value should be 255 for 8 cores and 15 for 4 cores.
If not, any chance you could retest using the above values and report back on any changes?
Googer - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
The lack of PS2 is a real deal killer for me, I have a beloved IBM Clicky Model M keyboard (1391401) and I will not give it up for anything. I know PS2-usb keyboard adapter exist but they just don't work very well.I am not alone, there are tens of thousands of vintage keyboard lovers out there and the IBM Model 1391401 is one of the more popular ones among keyboard aficionados.
Kind of sad that a 20-30 year old keyboard still works as well as they day it was made, new cheaper keyboards are less acuurate, uncomfortable, very flimsy and are poorly made. You would be lucky to get 5-6 years out of 'some' of these newer $90+ keyboards.
Save PS2, keep it alive. PS/2 has less lag than any USB keyboard I have tried. There are a lot of great keyboards still in use. There is no shortage of real estate on the back IO shields, so there should be no reason not to include a PS/2 port..
MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
Seconding this. USB is incapable of providing n-key rollover for keyboards. PS2 can. Not everyone needs that, but I won't do without it.Zoomer - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
I saw at least one PS2 port on these motherboards. What are you talking about again? Yes, they seem to be shared with the PS2 port for mice, but mice work the same on USB anyway.Taft12 - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
This is probably the most off-topic post I've seen on this site. Fortunately for all of us, your rant is invalid and you never have to say anything about this ever again:http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&a...">http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&a...
boogerlad - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
where't ta152h now? That idiot is finally done trolling.snakeoil - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
all the results of this review are biased because they were made with turbo enabled, that's at least 600 mhz overclocking.to be fair you must compare this results against a phenom 2 overclockded at least 600 mhz
people is not stupid.