Intel Lynnfield i7 870 Review - Versus i7 965

Intel's newest Lynnfield i7 870 goes up against the older brother i7 965.

Turbo mode seems to really even things up with the 870 slightly surpassing the 965 in terms of performance in many tests.

Results here:

http://www.thelab.gr/showthread.php?...#content_start
http://www.thelab.gr/showthread.php?t=67992&garpg=8

Reveiw starts here:
http://translate.google.com/translat...istory_state0=

http://thelab.gr/picture.php?albumid=198&pictureid=3831

http://www.thelab.gr/picture.php?alb...pictureid=3843
:)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=232368

ouch that board is ugly...
mem slots blocked by vga
debug led blocked by vga
super cheap coils
super cheap conventional caps
usb and front panel and fp audio connectors are all over the place...

lol...


hmmm everest is slower with turbo on?
that everest cpu benchmark seems... weird? same results on all cpus even at diferent clockspeeds? 0_o
the graphs are too small, the results all look 100% identical...
i wish theyd have run more 3d tests and done some oc performance compares as well

Sorry guys but the samples where only available for 4 days only. Also we had really hard time to make the board work with 4870x2 but we didn't make it. There wasn't any support from intels side either. The only thing they kept telling us was "its a pre-production model" (deal with it, lol).

It just didnt activate the on-board crossfire controller of 4870x2 so it was like 2 single 4870's.

The motherboards whole operation was weird. it didn't boot up or even if it did we had to setup the bios settings again and again... Really frustrating.

Also i don't know if windows 7 had to do anything with it but CPU wasn't clocking to 3.6 in turbo mode for all cores. Mobo had different multipliers for different number of active cores in bios too.

@ NoDsl

3.6Ghz on all cores isn´t possible.

3.60Ghz @ 1 Core (2 Threads)
3.46Ghz @ 2 Cores (4 Threads)
3.20Ghz @ 4 Cores (8 Threads)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chri$ch

@ NoDsl

3.6Ghz on all cores isn´t possible.

3.60Ghz @ 1 Core (2 Threads)
3.46Ghz @ 2 Cores (4 Threads)
3.20Ghz @ 4 Cores (8 Threads)

---

Yes it was wrong expression from me. Sorry.

And yes in multithreaded benchies 3.2 was the core clock, in evereset is well shown. thats why ther isnt much difference from 2.93 the default speed.

965EE was also clocked @ 2.93 for c2c comparison and in all cases memories worked at 1333 9-9-9-24 ;)

ohhhh the 965 was downclocked! i didnt see that :D

you should make the graphs horizontally and longer to show the small diferences better...
but besides that, very good review considering the hardware hehe :D
really a shame, the x58 board from intel was ... "ok" this board def seems like a step backwards... they made the same mistakes as with the x58 board and then made a bunch of new mistakes :rolleyes:

really dissapointing...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by saaya

ohhhh the 965 was downclocked! i didnt see that :D

you should make the graphs horizontally and longer to show the small diferences better...
but besides that, very good review considering the hardware hehe :D
really a shame, the x58 board from intel was ... "ok" this board def seems like a step backwards... they made the same mistakes as with the x58 board and then made a bunch of new mistakes :rolleyes:

really dissapointing...

---

Yes it was downclocked. thanks for noticing :D

We really wanted to see what was the real difference of the two platforms by testing them c2c. I really don' t see the point now in getting a socket 1366 based system unless you really need xfire.

5870x2 will come soon though so, that makes 2 reasons for me. Only 16lanes needed.

As for the board... Don't even mention it again. I had to have such pain in the *** from the DFI nf2 era....

I will consider your tip for the graphs for the next review thank you :)

well 1366 will get a 6core chip so if you need threads for video editing or are a distributed computing aka folding at home fan, then 1366 beats 1156...
and if the boards are really not matured yet, dunno how the other boards are doing, then 1366 still has that advantage as well... its been out for a year already and boards are very stable and easy to use with the latest bioses...

and also, it seems 1366 cpus clock better than 1156?
a lot of reviewers cant even hit 4ghz on air, or they can only hit it with high voltages... while every recent 920 i know of can hit 4.2ghz stable with good air cooling...

and on 1366 you can adjust uncore...

overall you can build about the same system on 1366 and 1156 and the price diference is not that big... at least with the current cpu and board pricing... so if i would want to build a new system now... i think id go for a sub 200$ 1366 board and a 920... i pay a little more but get a more mature platform, tri channel mem, slight better ocing, 5% boost in xfire and sli, and thats with only 2 vgas or i can run sli+xfire at 8/8 and still have a lot of extra pciE lanes for other cards, i can tweak it better (uncore multi) and i can upgrade it to a 6core and make it a highend system again in 2-3 years...

I think 1366 is clearly aimed for bussiness or true enthusiast users.

Samples of oced lynnfields over the net that i see form screenies can clock to 4.4 with ease.

Also some asus and gigabyte P55 mobos seem to work nicely. And imho i dont really see any difference from tri-channel to dual of lynnfields.

The truth is for xfire setups the x58 is oneway. Thats a fact.

For a normal pc user though i think a new gen card would be more than enough and more demanding users could be ok with a x2 card. Even Cry engine has optimization and run a lot better even on a 4870 at 1680*1050.

I've been playing with a 860 for the last couple of days. At stock speeds with a 4870x2 and 8GB DDR3 (2000MHz 9-9-9-24) it was getting 18k in my 3DMark test (1280x1024, 8xAA, 16xAF, Full Precision). This is on a par with 3.6GHz Core2 or PhII performance and higher than a 975 @ stock with 12GB and a GTX295 (though turning off Virtual Memory changed that). 860 is definitely the sweet spot in Intel's current line up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by initialised

I've been playing with a 860 for the last couple of days. At stock speeds with a 4870x2 and 8GB DDR3 (2000MHz 9-9-9-24) it was getting 18k in my 3DMark test (1280x1024, 8xAA, 16xAF, Full Precision). This is on a par with 3.6GHz Core2 or PhII performance and higher than a 975 @ stock with 12GB and a GTX295 (though turning off Virtual Memory changed that). 860 is definitely the sweet spot in Intel's current line up.

---

Equal to a 975? thats great! and its only a 2.8Ghz cpu! Also from a notice by a corsair guy, 1156 seems to oc better ram than x58. So if we get to our hands 2800Mhz DDR3 monsters. tha real deal is on ! :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by saaya

ouch that board is ugly...
mem slots blocked by vga
debug led blocked by vga
super cheap coils
super cheap conventional caps
usb and front panel and fp audio connectors are all over the place...

lol...


hmmm everest is slower with turbo on?
that everest cpu benchmark seems... weird? same results on all cpus even at diferent clockspeeds? 0_o
the graphs are too small, the results all look 100% identical...
i wish theyd have run more 3d tests and done some oc performance compares as well

---

Yes i agree, intel should stop producing boards, they look like crap and always undeperform.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NoDsl

Equal to a 975? thats great! and its only a 2.8Ghz cpu! Also from a notice by a corsair guy, 1156 seems to oc better ram than x58. So if we get to our hands 2800Mhz DDR3 monsters. tha real deal is on ! :D

---

True, all the 1333MHz kits I've tried on P55 will do 1600MHz but this is patchy on X58 I usually have to stop around 1500MHz.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NoDsl

Equal to a 975? thats great! and its only a 2.8Ghz cpu! Also from a notice by a corsair guy, 1156 seems to oc better ram than x58. So if we get to our hands 2800Mhz DDR3 monsters. tha real deal is on ! :D

---

Its oc memory so well becouse its dual channel;)
But its oc memory like hell anyway:P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NoDsl

Equal to a 975? thats great! and its only a 2.8Ghz cpu! Also from a notice by a corsair guy, 1156 seems to oc better ram than x58. So if we get to our hands 2800Mhz DDR3 monsters. tha real deal is on ! :D

---

Its only equal because of the higher turbo mode on the i7 860. Most enthusiasts will want to overclock, and as soon as they do, turbo mode is disabled, and the 860s advantage is gone.

So you can't say that its just as fast at stock clocks and overclocks well in the same sentence because then you're just nitpicking advantages of the CPU from different scenarios.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Salavat23

Its only equal because of the higher turbo mode on the i7 860. Most enthusiasts will want to overclock, and as soon as they do, turbo mode is disabled, and the 860s advantage is gone.

So you can't say that its just as fast at stock clocks and overclocks well in the same sentence because then you're just nitpicking advantages of the CPU from different scenarios.

---

Sorry, but i think enthusiasts will be more than satisfied with a 250 dollar chip(860) that can do something like this

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NoDsl

Sorry, but i think enthusiasts will be more than satisfied with a 250 dollar chip(860) that can do something like this

---

But will you be running that 24/7? No.

And that's not to say that the 900 series can't get up that high.