Intel Core i5 Performance

[Sly Fox]

Core i5 looks great so far. Definitely awesome to see competitive products all around from Intel and AMD.

Let's bring on Q9650 price drops first though! I want a $350 one!

[Donnie27]

so my answer is wait for i5 then

Not me I'm looking at a 920 but the AMD version. Unlike a few others I don't have any allusions of grandeur. I know it will NOT be faster. I do think it will be close enough that the price difference will make that moot. I was just saying that I RESPECT those folks waiting for whatever they want to spend their money on.

That doesn't mean I'm going trash out AMD or Intel to justify what I buy. I like Blauhung and Dr Who, thanks guys! To those guys. With the markets in it current condition, Intel and AMD have more problems than each other. I'd hope they pull another Northwood April Fool's day surprise! Instead, I was told more like 2 years to the days Conroe launched. I'm not waiting that long but don't think those who do are retarded

[Donnie27]

Core i5 looks great so far. Definitely awesome to see competitive products all around from Intel and AMD.

Let's bring on Q9650 price drops first though! I want a $350 one!

It will NOT drop anytime soon I'd like to have seen a $239 Q9550 But it is still at $319 at Newegg!

[George_o/c]

But why noone answers my question ... ? i5 is less expensive than i7, and still it performs better in the benchmarks we saw ... It simply, doesn't make sense ...

[alexio]

Core i7 was designed for tripple-channel and has some memory latency "problems" (dual-channel performs about on par and sometimes it's faster). I guess that for a single socket platform a dual-channel design might be slightly better. Plus, there could be some general tweaks in this new chips, who knows? Remember the Intel TLB "bug"? Well, CPUs have many of such bugs all the time. It could be that they ironed out some kinks in the i7 design to make the i5 slightly faster clock for clock.

Things are looking good

[Blauhung]

But why noone answers my question ... ? i5 is less expensive than i7, and still it performs better in the benchmarks we saw ... It simply, doesn't make sense ...

you must have missed my post at the bottom of the last page....

as a platform, i5 will be cheaper.

[George_o/c]

you must have missed my post at the bottom of the last page....

as a platform, i5 will be cheaper.

No I've read every post of this thead thoroughly ... every word maybe twice

I know it will be cheaper as a platform than i7 ... but why it's cheaper than i7 yet performs better than i7 ?

[T_Flight]

This is just outstanding! This company never ceases to amaze me at how on the ball they are. They are taking the PC Desktop market by storm, and are now positioned to take the low power chip maket by storm, along with the server market as well. It's awesome. The people who develop this stuff are getting it done, their marketing department has a cake walk with this stuff because it basically sells itself with a helpful nudge from them. No shady ad gimmicks or anything from them. Just first class all the way. They have the capital to weather this economic crisis we're in, and their R&D is just complete and total domination!

Intel! Dang people! You ROCK! Keep it up.

[Blauhung]

No I've read every post of this thead thoroughly ... every word maybe twice

I know it will be cheaper as a platform than i7 ... but why it's cheaper than i7 yet performs better than i7 ?

ah, sorry, It's late and I'm still stuck at work.

Most likely this is due to the fact that there's just less components to the platform. The i5 removes several unnecessary layers of hardware that just don't need to be there on a single socket board with the current arch.

Also, Core i7 is the server platform shoehorned into the single socket high end consumer market. Server platforms always tend to make sacrifices on performance to compromise and improve reliability and efficiency on specific work loads.

[George_o/c]

Ok thanks for your answer man - makes sense now
Yeah, I even had doubts my self about my previous post, because I have't slept in like 24 hours and everything's kind of ...

T_Flight: Man, you are literally worshipping Intel Are you looking for sponsorships or what ?
j/k man, it's just like your post, is so revolutionary ...

[Chad Boga]

This is just outstanding! This company never ceases to amaze me at how on the ball they are. They are taking the PC Desktop market by storm, and are now positioned to take the low power chip maket by storm, along with the server market as well. It's awesome. The people who develop this stuff are getting it done, their marketing department has a cake walk with this stuff because it basically sells itself with a helpful nudge from them. No shady ad gimmicks or anything from them. Just first class all the way. They have the capital to weather this economic crisis we're in, and their R&D is just complete and total domination!

Intel! Dang people! You ROCK! Keep it up.

Call me hard to please, but I think the last year has been more about AMD failing to execute than Intel performing in a stellar fashion.

I think Intel have been good, but not outstanding in recent times.

I would call the introduction of Conroe as an outstanding achievement, but i7 and i5 aren't that significant an improvement over Conroe/Penryn for the time that has elapsed since Conroe's introduction.

[Donnie27]

No I've read every post of this thead thoroughly ... every word maybe twice

I know it will be cheaper as a platform than i7 ... but why it's cheaper than i7 yet performs better than i7 ?

PCI-E controller is on die on the i5 and is NOT on the i7 but i7 has more PCI-E lanes.

It's how you use it maybe. i7 is made to do lots more of a server chip made for multi-tasking, Vitalization, connect to other chip (disable sections) and etc.... It also has more PCI-E lanes. Sure there are little or smaller gains to be seen now . It is just like comparing Dual core compared to Quad core about 18 months ago. As more and more threads are ran, bandwidth is chewed up or used. So sure one test at time might not show much difference, let's put it to work on more than one thing at time and see what happens?

[ap4lifetn]

So I wasted my money on i7? AAHHH

Note: this similar to x48 vs P45, same processors, just different PCI-E lanes, and of course the other architectural differences, but thats mainly it.

and we all know how good the P45's performed

[T_Flight]

Ok thanks for your answer man - makes sense now
Yeah, I even had doubts my self about my previous post, because I have't slept in like 24 hours and everything's kind of ...

T_Flight: Man, you are literally worshipping Intel Are you looking for sponsorships or what ?
j/k man, it's just like your post, is so revolutionary ...

I'm kinda blown away. Seriously. I do go overboard sometimes. I just found something with my system a few days ago and have found it's a processing beast. Basically I found out we don;t really have the proper benchmarking programs to fully test it with except for a couple...one in particular.

This i5 thread comes out of nowhere and dang if it ain;t showing scores I never would've believed had I not seen them. That is a lower clocked, low power chip! I read the thread and had to post about it.

It's like what are they gonna do next? Roll out an 8 core 16 threaded monster and call it i10? I can't contain myself anymore.

[George_o/c]

So I wasted my money on i7? AAHHH

Kind of ... I've said it a lot of times ... Upgrade early (once the new technology is out) ONLY if it's urgent ... if you have a workstation full of servers for example, or work with an hdd that has virtualization with 2 OSs ... If not though, wait for the new technology to mature, and then upgrade

I also hear some guys, suggesting others to buy i7 in order to play GTA IV ... Are we nuts here ? This game doesn't need i7 so that you play normally ... it needs a proper "face-lifting" from Rockstar® - I'm talking about the patch here of course ...

But that's enough off-topic, let's end it here

[ap4lifetn]

I find it odd how this test was conducted using laptop DDR3, and a notebook power adapter...i mean i know its a development system, but are they really that broke?

What clock speeds are these supposed to hit on launch? Seeing as how these have the same L3 Cache as i7, they will probably be limited to 222BCLK also, so lower multipliers won't let them overclock too high.

[George_o/c]

I'm kinda blown away. Seriously. I do go overboard sometimes. I just found something with my system a few days ago and have found it's a processing beast. Basically I found out we don;t really have the proper benchmarking programs to fully test it with except for a couple...one in particular.

This i5 thread comes out of nowhere and dang if it ain;t showing scores I never would've believed had I not seen them. That is a lower clocked, low power chip! I read the thread and had to post about it.

It's like what are they gonna do next? Roll out an 8 core 16 threaded monster and call it i10? I can't contain myself anymore.

Yeah, I can fully understand you
You are describing it with nothing but enthusiasm, but you 're right, nehalem's fast ...

But you know what ... Maybe it's not as fast, as we initially thought it would be ... I saw specific people posting on forums right after their upgrade to Conroe (mostly E6600 and E6700) : "I'm not buying anything else for my pc, I'm waiting for nehalem @ early 2009" ... I now see the same people posting : "I'm ok with my Q6600 @ 3.6GHz (yeah they upgraded when Q6600s were insanely cheap ), I'm gonna wait for the REAL technology, 32nm here we come" ...

What's happening here ? Maybe these people aren't satisfied with the progress Intel made ? I mean it's clearly not the progress we noticed from Pentium D to Conroe, or Kentsfield to Yorkfield ...

Nehalem are fast and perform really really well ... But, I reckon, they don't dazzle us ... they don't jump off the page

[George_o/c]

I find it odd how this test was conducted using laptop DDR3, and a notebook power adapter...i mean i know its a development system, but are they really that broke?

What clock speeds are these supposed to hit on launch? Seeing as how these have the same L3 Cache as i7, they will probably be limited to 222BCLK also, so lower multipliers won't let them overclock too high.

We can't be a 100% sure about i5's overclocking potential, 'cause well ... it's too early

But yeah, I suppose that they are going to be something like 920 or 940, overclocking wise

That's only my personal opinion though, not based on facts or anything ... And I'd appreciate it, if anyone here knows sth about i5 overclocking capabillities

[savantu]

So I wasted my money on i7? AAHHH

Note: this similar to x48 vs P45, same processors, just different PCI-E lanes, and of course the other architectural differences, but thats mainly it.

and we all know how good the P45's performed

You didn't wasted your money on i7 ; you bought the highest performing combo available on the market.

Intel has no intention to rapidly ramp the i series ; they are milking Core ( Penryn/Yorkfield ).The yields are simply excellent , the designs are true and tested , performance is within I7 range in desktop apps.Why bother with a design which is 2.3x larger and comes with DDR3 ?

I series are needed in servers and high end workstations ( basically from 2P up ) and that's where the push will come early next year.

I5s are set for release in Q3/early Q4 from rumors , that's 10 months from now.

[noinimod]

I don't see why ppl are hating on nehalem's performance, or at least the not that huge boost in speed.. there's clearly no need at the moment for intel to produce another monster of a chip aka conroe style when their chips already outperform amd's best offerings by a mile.

[qurious63ss]

No I've read every post of this thead thoroughly ... every word maybe twice

I know it will be cheaper as a platform than i7 ... but why it's cheaper than i7 yet performs better than i7 ?

I would say that it depends on the application. i7 is a workstation so it will perform better on those apps. i5 is desktop so it will perform better on desktop apps. As far as price well it's cheaper to fab i5 i.e. die size? yields?

[savantu]

I don't see why ppl are hating on nehalem's performance, or at least the not that huge boost in speed.. there's clearly no need at the moment for intel to produce another monster of a chip aka conroe style when their chips already outperform amd's best offerings by a mile.

i7 is as much of a jump in performance as Core was.Just that people looking through game centric glasses ( and desktops too )forget that games are not centrum mundi.

Other than games ( once that new graphic drivers are optimized for I7 , not to mention games, things will change here too ) i7 pretty much stomps Core 20-50% across the board.
What's more , in workstation apps and servers it will simply trash the current Harpertowns.That's what it was designed for after all.

[savantu]

I would say that it depends on the application. i7 is a workstation so it will perform better on those apps. i5 is desktop so it will perform better on desktop apps. As far as price well it's cheaper to fab i5 i.e. die size? yields?

They are identical except I5 has PCI-E and lacks QPI , a small change to the uncore part.

[Shintai]

You didnt waste money buying i7 over i5 as such. unless you bought something you wouldnt use.

i7=trichannel, SLi/Crossfire up to 3 GFX cards.
i5=dualchannel, "lowend" x8 crossfire or only single card.

The cores are 100% identical. Same quadcore with HT and 8MB L3.

i5 and i7 basicly cost (close to) the same to make. Its all about the rest of the platform.

[Spacemaster]

Question is what about multiplier, can we expect higher multiplier than i7, or same like i7 for the start? 16 is ok, but 20, 22, 24 is more interesting for overclock.