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
Final Words
I'll start this conclusion with what AMD must do in response to Lynnfield. The Core i5 750 is a great processor at $196, in fact, it's the best quad-core CPU you can buy at that price today. In nearly every case it's faster than AMD's Phenom II X4 965 BE, despite the AMD processor costing almost another $50. Granted you can probably save some money on an integrated 785G motherboard, but if you're comparing ~$120 motherboards the AMD CPU is simply overpriced.
Lynnfield (top) vs. Phenom II (bottom)
Luckily, the solution isn't that difficult. AMD needs to lower prices. The problem is that AMD has too many products below $200 already. The Phenom II X3 and X4 series both exist below $200 and rumor has it that AMD is also going to introduce a quad-core Athlon II somewhere down there. Lynnfield's arrival causes a lot of price compression on AMD's side. The most AMD should sell the 965 BE for is $199, but if it is to remain competitive the chip needs to be priced much lower. That doesn't leave much room for other AMD CPUs. On the bright side, this could force AMD to simplify its product lines again (similar to what it has quietly been doing already).
The next thing that the Core i5 750 does is it finally ends the life of LGA-775. Just as was the case with AMD, the Core 2 Quad Q9650 is easily destroyed by the Core i5 750 and at a lower price. With significantly lower motherboard costs than the LGA-1366 chips, the Core i5 750 can actually compete in the high end LGA-775 space. It's only a matter of time before the sub-$200 LGA-775 parts are made obsolete as well.
Lynnfield power consumption is just excellent, these are the most power efficient quad-core CPUs we've ever tested. They use less power at idle than similarly clocked dual-core processors and under load they deliver better performance per watt than any of their closest competitors. Later this year we'll see 32nm dual-core Westmere start to ship for notebooks. I don't have performance data but I'd expect that early next year will be the perfect time to buy a new notebook.
Can you tell that I like the Core i5 750? Again, at $196 you can't find a better processor. Intel did its homework very well and managed to deliver something that kept AMD in check without completely upsetting the balancing of things. There's no technical reason that Intel couldn't have enabled Hyper Threading on the Core i5, it's purely a competitive move. A Core i5 750 with HT would not only defeat the purpose of most of the i7s, but it would also widen the performance gap with AMD. Intel doesn't need to maintain a huge performance advantage, just one that's good enough. While I'd love to have a 750 with HT, I'd still recommend one without it.
The Core i7 870 gets close enough to the Core i7 975 that I'm having a hard time justifying the LGA-1366 platform at all. As I see it, LGA-1366 has a few advantages:
1) High-end multi-GPU Performance
2) Stock Voltage Overclocking
3) Future support for 6-core Gulftown CPUs
If that list doesn't make you flinch, then Lynnfield is perfect. You'll save a bunch on a motherboard and the CPUs start at $196 instead of $284. We didn't have enough time with our Core i7 860 to include performance results here but my instincts tell me that at $284 that'll be the Lynnfield sweetspot. You get excellent turbo modes and Hyper Threading, without breaking $300.
Speaking of turbo, I'd say that Intel is definitely on to something here. The performance impact was small with Bloomfield, but turbo on Lynnfield is huge. My tests showed up to a 17% increase in performance depending on the workload, with most CPU-influenced scenarios seeing at least 9 or 10%. The turbo mode transitions happen fast enough to accelerate even simple actions like opening a new window. OS and application responsiveness is significantly improved as a result and it's something that you can actually feel when using a Lynnfield machine. It all works so seamlessly, you just always get the best performance you need. It's like Intel crammed the best single, dual and quad-core processors all into one package.
Perhaps that's what kept me from falling in love with Bloomfield right away. It was fast but in the same way that its predecessors were fast. If you didn't have a well threaded application, Bloomfield wasn't any better than a similarly clocked Penryn. Lynnfield's turbo modes change the game. Say goodbye to tradeoffs, the Core i5 and Core i7 are now fast regardless of thread count. It speed that is useful, it speed that you can feel, it's what truly makes Lynnfield the best desktop microprocessor of 2009. It's not just faster, it's smarter, it's better. It's why today's title borrows from Daft Punk and not Star Wars; it's not more of the same, it's something futuristic and new.
Lynnfield shows us the beginning of how all microprocessors are going to be made in the future. Even AMD is embracing turbo, we'll see it with Fusion in 2011. Extend turbo to its logical conclusion and you end up with something very exciting. Imagine a processor made up of many different cores, large and small, CPU and GPU. Each one turning on/off depending on the type of workload, and each running as fast as possible without dissipating more heat than your system can handle.
My only two complaints with Lynnfield are that the chips do require additional voltage (above stock) to overclock and of course the lack of Hyper Threading on the Core i5. It doesn't ruin the processor, but it gives us something to wish for.
Our work is never over.
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jonup - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Unfortunately people in corporate world do not make a difference between a HD4500 and a GX790. As lond as the Intel can display spreadsheets its good enough (or better) than a GTX295/HD4890X2, because it is Intel. You can change ignorance when it works.PassingBy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
My horizons are broad enough, thank you. The needs of many corporate desktops/laptops will be met by Clarkdale/Arrandale and no, nobody will go blind or suffer eyestrain (by virtue of the IGP anyway).PassingBy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
No edit function, so, as I point out later in the thread, people reading this review presumably won't be interested in IGPs anyway, given that these processors now have no IGP market. Wait for Clarkdale before trying to compare IGPs.dragunover - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Thanks for the review, if not as soon as I wanted it!Boobs McGee - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Do you guys have plans to do a motherboard review roundup for P55?If not, please do.
Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I actually have three roundups planned, we have 15 boards here ranging from the $100 uATX items up to the $300 EVGA Classified series. We are only testing with retail products, released BIOS', and retail processors so the delivery of more than 70% of the boards late last week has created a small logjam. ;)The first article should be up on Thursday with a couple of my favorite boards and then a rather large one up on Monday and the last one a few days after that. Raja is working on a separate roundup of the top three boards targeted for the more extreme OC community. We will also have a P55 memory specific article shortly.
ClagMaster - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Looking forward to reading these P55 motherboard roundups.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Yes, Gary is nearly complete with his. Give him another day and it'll be up :)Take care,
Anand
Comdrpopnfresh - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
By creating a new socket- they're providing a disincentive for early adopters of bloomfield. This chip is literally a humpty-dumpty that stands to benefit intel with everyone suffering a small loss of their own. The benefits of lynnfield vs bloomfield come from shuffling the architectural deck of nehalem. In reality, it only shows the possibilities of an inflexible architecture.The turbo mode isn't cutting it in day-to-day power consumption reduction. On the scale of a day, the average shmoe who is ass enough to leave a computer on for no reason gains no benefit. Lower the reach of a voltage plane, and reduce the number of components sucking juice, that only present benefits under certain situations (a third memory channel), and shmoe is happier.
If it was in the article, I apologize, but with the pci-e controller being on the un-core... what happens on a chipset with integrated graphics? Will the igp be linked to the processor now, rather than a bridge chip? If ati or nvidia made their own supporting chipsets with an igp- would the igp represent a chip onto itself, solely connected to the cpu, or would it have to work through dmi, and leave those on-die pci-e lanes for domestic usage?
It seems this is the warning rattle to nvidia that they chose their place with ion, and are stuck in it. When the change to 32nm comes, and the gpu is integrated into the cpu- what kind of robust 3rd party chipsets could exist in the budget end? Sure, you can always add a dedicated, off-die, gpu... but for budget boards used to eons of making room for a cpu and working a bridge chip around an igp- either horrible inefficiencies will creep up, or higher prices.
My money is on westmere having at least three power planes.
I'd like to know: with the pci-e controller on-die now... what impact this puts on graphics cards with higher on-card memory. Does it strengthen or minimalize it?
And, can the cpu now share the gpu's memory as a way to extend cache- after years of being forced to share the system pool. That 16gb/s link to gddr5 looks mouthwatering. I'd like to see performance tests run with the pci-e varient ssds floating around out there saddled to the on-die pci-e lanes, and a graphics card running off of chipset. Rather than elevating a horse-power driven graphics subsystem, I think the benefits of supplying more 'torque' by freeing mass storage ssds from the SATA interface would be far more substantial, and in all applications of the PC. You already have the means for nearly 2+2/3 times the theoretical bandwidth of SATA-6- which up til now seems rather bug-ridden and defunct.
Also interested in the outcomes of usb3 with this- as usb is built on the foundations of pci-e, is it not? If usb3 can allow for pci-e externally, and you remove the latency issue of usb signaling traveling from some peripheral bridge chip to the cpu, and just jack the usb3 communications into the cpu... could one use usb3 as a computer-to-computer psuedo qpi teaming/networking bridge for inter-desktop cpu communication. skip the entire bottleneck of client-level software implementation, and the subsystem communication buses for out-of-box signaling too...
plague911 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
The market just got a little more crowded so hopefully this will bring a reduction in prices of the 920. but..
“The Core i7 870 gets close enough to the Core i7 975 that I'm having a hard time justifying the LGA-1366 platform at all. As I see it, LGA-1366 has a few advantages:
1) High-end multi-GPU Performance
2) Stock Voltage Overclocking
3) Future support for 6-core Gulftown CPUs
“
Your exactly right 1366 I think is going to be be the best option to “future proof” my system however the new chips make the 920- seem a little low on features. With the goal of “performance on a budget” I feel like we are stuck either getting a board with a socket which wont compete in the future, or chip which is weaker than its lower class cousins. Unfortunately I dont see any of this being fixed in the next few cycles. Id like to see a low clocked gulftown (to save cost) feature rich with good OC potential thats on the lower end of the price scale. To me this would be a good follow up to 920 but but it dosent seem like that will be coming out for several cycles. Unless ofc i'm missing something which is probably the case.