The Rest of Clarkdale: Intel's Pentium G6950 & Core i5 650/660/670 Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 24, 2010 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The rest of the Clarkdale lineup performs quite well, but our issue has never been with its performance - rather its price. The closer you get to spending $200 on a CPU the better off you'll be buying a Core i5 750 instead. It's also a shame that Intel offers such a wide range of integrated graphics performance. It would do a lot more for its image as a supplier of mediocre graphics if all Clarkdale chips offered 900MHz+ graphics.
The Pentium G6950 is a dangerously good competitor to AMD's dual-core CPUs. It outperforms AMD's Athlon II X2 255 and Phenom II X2 555 in pretty much all applications, however it lags behind in gaming performance. Intel's 32nm process gives it the edge in power consumption as the Pentium G6950 draws less power than any competing part from AMD.
The problem is the Athlon II X3 440. It's pretty much faster than the Pentium G6950 across the board and is even a little cheaper to boot. You lose out on the integrated graphics, but you get an extra core and better performance in most applications. Honestly the only reasons you'd pick the G6950 over the Athlon II X3 440 are if you need lower power consumption, better performance in single threaded applications or want to build a HTPC (note that TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming is not supported on the Pentium G6950, only on the Core i3/i5). They are valid reasons but if pure performance is all you care about, then AMD offers more bang for your buck.
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Teloy - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
"It's GPU still only runs at 733MHz though"... "It's" is not quite right... Take care.8steve8 - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
why was the G45 omitted on pg2 in the graph of power consumption under load with integrated graphics?I was keen to see how much more efficient HD graphics were than g45.
-stephen
bpdski - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
It would have been nice to see the benchmarks run with the overclocked G6950 also.- Brian
Taft12 - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
I have a hard time comprehending what Intel/AMD's TDP ratings mean in light of the "Load Power Consumption" graph.How is it that Intel CPUs with higher TDP ratings consume MUCH LESS power at load than AMD CPUs with lower TDP ratings. Just looks at the results -- all of the Intel core i3/5 CPUs are 73W TDP but the Athlon X2 255 is rated at 65W yet consumes 20 more watts at load. Is the 790FX motherboard that inefficient? WTF???
Lower idle consumption for Intel I understand due to the smaller process and excellent design, but do the TDP ratings truly mean nothing? This is a disastrous result for AMD.
strikeback03 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Both companies rate their TDP differently, and in either case it is not designed to be a measure of power consumption.Nickel020 - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
It would be nice if you could include the 661 in the power consumption charts. Does its higher TDP actually lead to higehr power consumption?Sunburn74 - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
If you're gonna talk about the value of a 4.4 ghz overclocked processor, you gotta include it the benchmarks. Duh!crochat - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
Why the hell is it necessary to always put discrete graphics card in systems with integrated graphics and do power consumption tests with it? Is the benchmark used for power independent from the graphics card?I understand that it is much simpler to measure watts only, but what is important is the resulting task energy consumption, taking into account the efficiency of the processor..
strikeback03 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Because some of the tested systems don't have integrated graphics. So for the application performance comparisons shown to be valid, the discrete GPU has to be kept in there. Wouldn't want someone thinking they could get 69.1 FPS in Crysis Warhead with the power consumption of only the integrated graphics.Taft12 - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
It's necessary to save many hours of work the testers could spend on more articles. What counts is the delta in power consumption between CPUs/platforms at idle and load.I'm an AMD fan, but the bottom line is Intel systems are more power efficient, period.