Anandtech review for Core i3 530, 540 and Core i5 661

[maroon1]

Review
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3704&p=1

With the i3s you get a great dual-core chip that is competitive with AMD's Athlon II X4 line in many multi-threaded applications. AMD sacrificed its L3 cache in order to bring four cores down to reasonable price points. Intel's Core i3s start with two cores, a complete cache hierarchy, and give you Hyper Threading to improve performance in those multi-threaded scenarios. If you're doing a lot of video encoding or 3D rendering AMD's cheap quad-cores are going to be a better option, but for nearly everything else (gaming included) you'll be better off with the Core i3.

These things also overclock ridiculously well. We got 3.8GHz out of the i5 661 at stock voltage and I'd expect similarly sweet results out of the i3s.

For a HTPC there's simply none better than these new Clarkies. The on-package GPU keeps power consumption nice and low, enabling some pretty cool mini-ITX designs that we'll see this year. Then there's the feature holy-grail: Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA bitstreaming over HDMI. If you're serious about building an HTPC in 2010, you'll want one of Intel's new Core i3s or i5s.

A huge selling point for corporate markets is going to be Clarkdale's AES-NI support. The impact on disk performance with Bitlocker enabled is noticeable. Enabling Bitlocker caused my testbed SSD to take a 15% performance hit in disk I/O on Clarkdale vs. over 30% with Lynnfield. If you need to enable disk encryption as a corporate requirement, Clarkdale (and Arrandale) is going to help improve performance tremendously. Couple it with an SSD and you're in business.

The performance of these processors are quite impressive. The Core i3 530 was able to compete very well against Athlon X4 630 in multi-threading application, and at same time it performs much better in single-threaded applications.

Those processors have an Integrated GPU which performs day and night better than the older Intel GMA 4500HD IGP, and it can compete very well even with AMD 790GX. Thats really good news for HTPC users.

The i5 661 cost the same as Core i5 750. So, unless you want to use the integrated GPU, I would not really recommend i5 6xx series. But i3 5xx are much more attractive for its price

 

[mx344]

HOLY CRAP!!!

4.3ghz on stock cooler!!! AMAZING


I might be looking into these things, 4.8ghz overclock at 1.435 very impressive, srry amd looks like a change is gonna be made

Those vid. encoding speeds and gaming results looks very good aswell.

 

[Drenlin]

Oh man...I think I may be changing up the build I'd planned.

 

[87dtna]

The I5 750 is still superior in pretty much every aspect, and is the same price as the new dual core I5's.
Who cares about internal graphics.

Once the gigabyte P55-UD7 motherboard comes out, the I5 750 will be capable of full 16x/16x Xfire/SLI. Then once again the I5 750 will be the best bang for the buck. It really still is, the 750 is a BEAST.

The only thing better is overclockability, 5ghz on air would be nice. But 4.2ghz full logical quad core will beat out a 4.8ghz dual core with HT anyday.

 

[linkin]

I think i may upgrade to an i3. leaves me room for an i5 or i7 later on.

 

[87dtna]

Just a question to anybody that knows, seems they are all socket 1156 but will the I3 and I5 600 series work with a P55 board? Looks like they are receiving H55 and H57 chipsets because of the onboard video.

So how's the compatability? If they are not compatable, I think intel pulled another fast one making you buy all new hardware. I would personally like to be able to test out an I3, but I'm not gonna buy another motherboard just to do it.

 

[linkin]

I think some BIOS updates will get i3's working on P55 chipsets, if they don't already.

 

[2048Megabytes]

Intel Core i5 670 Dual-Core Processor is impressive. It can get up to 3.73 gigahertz when using turbo boost. But it definitely isn't worth $280. You could get a Core i7 Processor for that price.

I wonder how the Core 2 Duo E8400 would stack up against the Intel Core i5 650 (3.20 gigahertz) Processor?

The Core i3 530 Dual-Core Processor looks like a good deal.

 

[Stoic Sentinel]

Looks like I'm going i3

 

[Jamin43]

Tech Report had a write up on the Core i3 today too.

Article on New i3 & i5 cpu's - 15 pages

Core i3

The IGP's display pipelines and video processing unit have both been substantially upgraded, as well, with near-best-in-class capabilities. The hardware supports dual displays, each at resolutions up to 2560x1600, and it can now drive two displays simultaneously over HDMI, which the GMA 4500 series couldn't do. Richer colors are on the menu thanks to support for 12-bit-per-channel Deep Color over DisplayPort and HDMI, along with xvYCC capability for an expanded color gamut with wide-gamut displays.

Intel looks to have focused quite a bit on home theater PC-type usage models, and since display standards now carry audio signals, Clarkdale's IGP incorporates robust support for sound, as well. The IGP can stream up to eight channels of LPCM audio at 24 bits and 96 KHz. Supported standards include the lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTA-HD Master Audio codecs, both of which are used by Blu-ray titles.

Speaking of Blu-ray, the IGP's video unit provides "full" hardware acceleration for the decoding of the most popular video compression standards: H.264/AVC, VC-1, and MPEG2. This unit can now decode dual video streams simultaneously, helpful for Blu-ray discs that include features like picture-in-picture director's commentary. To make sure those abilities don't go unused, Intel has worked with third-party vendors to include support for its acceleration hardware in popular applications like ArcSoft Total Media Theater, CyberLink PowerDVD, and Corel WinDVD.....

Conclusion page
* Core i5-661 kept nearly matching the Core 2 Quad Q9400 in things like video encoding and rendering with just two cores.

* There are only two little weaknesses I can name. First, when installed in our P55 motherboard, the Core i5-661 had the same power draw at idle as the Core i5-750. With its two 32-nm cores, I had hoped its idle power draw might be measurably lower.

* Second, the dual-chip package has apparently produced relatively high memory access latencies. Those higher latencies obviously didn't hamper performance too much, but they may explain why the Core i5-661 wasn't much faster than the Core 2 Duo E8600 in a number of lightly threaded applications, including WorldBench's Office, Firefox, and WinZip tests.

* As a consumer product, though, the Core i5-661 is simply overpriced for its performance. I'm not sure why Intel chose to price it comparably to the Core i5-750 and the Phenom II X4 965, very fast quad-core processors.

* The Core i3-540 is considerably more attractive compared to its competition.
Conclusion Summary Page

 

[linkin]

I wonder when the Core i3 and compatible mobo's will hit retail and online stores in australia. no doubt they will come at a premium...

 

[Bodaggit23]

Once the gigabyte P55-UD7 motherboard comes out, ........ the I5 750 will (still) be the best bang for the buck.

Doesn't that depend on how much the board costs?

What if the board costs $300?

 

[mx344]

Uhh isn't the 530 i3 the same as the 670 i5?
Just different clock speed?

 

[maroon1]

Just a question to anybody that knows, seems they are all socket 1156 but will the I3 and I5 600 series work with a P55 board? Looks like they are receiving H55 and H57 chipsets because of the onboard video.

Yes the i3 and i5 600 will work with P55

But the IGP will not work unless you have H55 or H57

Uhh isn't the 530 i3 the same as the 670 i5?
Just different clock speed?

Yes, and the i5 supports turbo mode, i3 don't