Core i7 870 Tested

[RPGWiZaRD]

In average of all tests with Everest memtest excluded 860 (which is ~10.2% higher clocked than 920) was like 6.7% faster than 920, that would mean Lynnfield at around 2.74GHz equals to Bloomfield at 2.66GHz in these tests theoretically but knowing how especially the games benchmark are heavily GPU performance bottlenecked so the difference gets ofc lower here, it means Lynnfield & P55 is pretty much as fast as Bloomfield & X58 clock for clock.

EDIT: Forgot about the higher turbo clocks for Lynnfield, would be nice to know whatever turbo was used and how it worked for the apps in question, turbo should definitely be turned off on both bloomfield and lynnfield so we can see how they compare like clock for clock.

[OBR]

about consuption - exactly, platform consume less not CPU

Core i7 800/Core i5 700 is not today upgrade fo Core 2 Q users, but great platform for good money for new customers ... Core i5 750 cost here 195 dolars its like Q8200, if i will decide between P55+Ci5 750 and P45+Q8200 for the same money, i will take P55+Ci5 750 ...

[labs23]

lol, you guys miss the point...
the 1156 cpus dont consume less power, the platform does.
1366 has an IOH, x58, while 1156 doesnt.
x58 is at least 25W, at least...

so yeah power consumption for 1156 systems will be lower, cpu power consumption eventually as well, but the latter will be minimal.

and overall looking at those graph, the advantage of 1156 over 1366 is a 50-75$ cheaper entry level cpu and 75$ cheaper boards with less features and slighlty less performance. 150$ at most... was it worth to wait for 1156 for 1 year? not really... everybody who gets an 1156 system soon and likes it, well, welcome to yesterday, you could have had this 1 year ago already :P

comparing those 1156 numbers with 775, i really dont see a reason to upgrade for normal end users and even frequent gamers...
what for? to go from 60fps to 70fps? and for that you need a new board and new cpu and hew heatsink and possibly new memory... nah, not worth it...

i think 775 will live on for a long time if intel doesnt kill it off actively, cause price perf wise its faring very very well.

Some will still be happy that S1156 is aimed at experiencing i7 other than using the much expensive S1366. It won't be a bad rip-off when the price is significantly lower than the other way around. Intel needs S1156 more than the consumers.

*BTW, the BI part, sooo sig'ed.

[Olivon]

Thanks Vozer

[Xoulz]

lol, you guys miss the point...
the 1156 cpus dont consume less power, the platform does.
1366 has an IOH, x58, while 1156 doesnt.
x58 is at least 25W, at least...

so yeah power consumption for 1156 systems will be lower, cpu power consumption eventually as well, but the latter will be minimal.

and overall looking at those graph, the advantage of 1156 over 1366 is a 50-75$ cheaper entry level cpu and 75$ cheaper boards with less features and slighlty less performance. 150$ at most... was it worth to wait for 1156 for 1 year? not really... everybody who gets an 1156 system soon and likes it, well, welcome to yesterday, you could have had this 1 year ago already :P

comparing those 1156 numbers with 775, i really dont see a reason to upgrade for normal end users and even frequent gamers...
what for? to go from 60fps to 70fps? and for that you need a new board and new cpu and hew heatsink and possibly new memory... nah, not worth it...

i think 775 will live on for a long time if intel doesnt kill it off actively, cause price perf wise its faring very very well.

99% of people who purchase a new computer aren't "enthusiasts" ..! The LGA1156 (p55/57) will be faster than the X58 for alot less, because thats what it's designed to do.

Only 1% of us can tweak a BIOS and unlock the true nature of the X58.

As it stands, dollar for dollar... the LGA1156 is a knockout platform.. thats real easy to get into for the majority of the people moving to Windows7.

Not everything is Xtreme.... don't over-shoot the topic.

[clayton]

i5 beats old 2 Quads like it's nothing.

[saaya]

about consuption - exactly, platform consume less not CPU

Core i7 800/Core i5 700 is not today upgrade fo Core 2 Q users, but great platform for good money for new customers ... Core i5 750 cost here 195 dolars its like Q8200, if i will decide between P55+Ci5 750 and P45+Q8200 for the same money, i will take P55+Ci5 750 ...

yeah, totally agree... but you can actually get a c2d platform for less thatll do really well for a gaming and normal desktop pc right now and for the next 2 years and probably more.

Some will still be happy that S1156 is aimed at experiencing i7 other than using the much expensive S1366. It won't be a bad rip-off when the price is significantly lower than the other way around. Intel needs S1156 more than the consumers

hows 1366 so expensive? 95% of the people who went 1366 are probably on a 920, which is 250$... and there are good 1366 boards out there for less than 200$, some will probably even drop to 150$ or lower when 1156 comes out.

yeah intel needs 1156, not the consumers, totally agree...
there are two ways for intel to push 1156, low pricing or killing off 775 alternatives, unfortunately i have a feeling itll be more of the latter :/

99% of people who purchase a new computer aren't "enthusiasts" ..! The LGA1156 (p55/57) will be faster than the X58 for alot less, because thats what it's designed to do.

what does being an enthusiast have to do with this? even at stock speed 1156 isnt notably faster than 1366 or 775...
and no, thats not what 1156 is designed for, lol, its not designed to be fast, its designed to be cheap!

Only 1% of us can tweak a BIOS and unlock the true nature of the X58.

what are you talking about? theres nothing magic or secret to unlock...

As it stands, dollar for dollar... the LGA1156 is a knockout platform.. thats real easy to get into for the majority of the people moving to Windows7.

Not everything is Xtreme.... don't over-shoot the topic.

knockout platform? why would people upgrade for windows7? lol

[Jacky]

comparing those 1156 numbers with 775, i really dont see a reason to upgrade for normal end users and even frequent gamers...
what for? to go from 60fps to 70fps? and for that you need a new board and new cpu and hew heatsink and possibly new memory... nah, not worth it...

Welcome to yesterday to put it in your own words. There's never much of a point to update from one generation to another if you want cost-effective performance. It's called "iteration" and "evolution" for a reason. I don't think even the (r)evolutionary conroe release was any different, was there really a sudden need to upgrade from a solid K8 platform? Hardly.

[Nedjo]

i5 beats old 2 Quads like it's nothing.

TurboMode magic... that's why pointing out frequency of any of those CPUs is pointless... remember playing with 920 when it came out... it has basically always run over nominal 2.66 GHz, regardless of the core load

[Chickenfeed]

There's never much of a point to update from one generation to another if you want cost-effective performance. It's called "iteration" and "evolution" for a reason.

Couldn't agree more. It would cost me well over $1000 to go i7 and other than media encoding, I wouldn't gain much. The fact that there is still no USB3 and SATA III support makes it even more pointless. The only reason I could justify the upgrade for myself is if I was using a quad gpu system as the gains are substantial.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

I still don't see how these graphs show such a major improvement over 775 quads honestly.

Besides synthetic benchmarks, I don't see a need for 1366. For the first time since I got into building PCs (1997 in junior high) that "next gen" for nearly any program ( I don't do Photoshop or any "professional" work).

That said, i5 looks like a cool platform and should donwell for general users who go on myspace and eBay, lol.

On a serious note, this will be a good cheap platformfor gamers on a budget.

[villa1n]

Hopefully they ll have a review with turbo off, and all cpu's at 2.93.. clock for clock so we can gauge it a bit better, because lets be honest, who here is going to run anything at 2.66ghz ? ^^

[Kingcarcas]

Nice to know the power consumption is less than the C2Q, not that i will be upgrading to i5 or i7 anytime soon. Going C2D back then was the way to go, with an 8800GT or better K8 became a bottleneck.

[SubZero.it]

Great news!!!

[cegras]

These results are suspiciously consistent. The conclusion is pretty obvious, too obvious.

[mk-ultra]

comparing cpu at 2.93 and 2.66ghz and claiming one is better than the other doesn't work in my book

[onethreehill]

comparing cpu at 2.93 and 2.66ghz and claiming one is better than the other doesn't work in my book

i7 870 (2.93 GHz) should be compared to i7 950 (3.06 GHz)

[RPGWiZaRD]

I'd much rather see a Lynnfield vs Bloomfield clock for clock (2.66 or 2.93GHz or 4.0GHz, clock doesn't matter as long as running at same bclock & CPU multi) and Turbo off. But what it looks like Lynnfield + P55 vs Bloomfield + X58 are pretty much identical clock for clock (with various mobos difference is still prolly within 3%).

For non-overclockers I'd agree i7 870 vs i7 950 review would make more sense cuz price isn't that much different.

[saaya]

Welcome to yesterday to put it in your own words. There's never much of a point to update from one generation to another if you want cost-effective performance.

thats not true, i upgraded from a cheap athlonxp system to a cheap 754 system and the performance boost was quite noticeable... and going from 939 to c2d was quite a boost as well...

going from p3 to athlon or p4 was a big boost
going from athlon to athlonxp was a minor boost
going from athlon xp to k8 was a big boost
going from k8 to k10 was a minor boost
going from k10 to k10.5 was a minor boost
going from core2 to corei7 was a minor boost

lately the perf boosts by new cpus are smaller and smaller... cause they push for more and more cores which dont help in most scenarios, and most software is now written for mainstream, to run on as many systems as possible, even 5 year old ones... i guess those are the reasons...

It's called "iteration" and "evolution" for a reason. I don't think even the (r)evolutionary conroe release was any different, was there really a sudden need to upgrade from a solid K8 platform? Hardly.

there was a notable performance boost in my experience...
but yes, its not like you ever needed the latest gen cpu to really do something you couldnt do before...

Couldn't agree more. It would cost me well over $1000 to go i7 and other than media encoding, I wouldn't gain much. The fact that there is still no USB3 and SATA III support makes it even more pointless. The only reason I could justify the upgrade for myself is if I was using a quad gpu system as the gains are substantial.

yeah but what will sata3 and usb3 be good for i ask you... running several ssds in raid maybe, but who does that? and will it really make a notable diference?
and usb3... faster external hdds, but do we really need that?

[LinusTech]

Single core K8 to dual core K8 was an enormous boost.

thats not true, i upgraded from a cheap athlonxp system to a cheap 754 system and the performance boost was quite noticeable... and going from 939 to c2d was quite a boost as well...

going from p3 to athlon or p4 was a big boost
going from athlon to athlonxp was a minor boost
going from athlon xp to k8 was a big boost
going from k8 to k10 was a minor boost
going from k10 to k10.5 was a minor boost
going from core2 to corei7 was a minor boost

lately the perf boosts by new cpus are smaller and smaller... cause they push for more and more cores which dont help in most scenarios, and most software is now written for mainstream, to run on as many systems as possible, even 5 year old ones... i guess those are the reasons...

there was a notable performance boost in my experience...
but yes, its not like you ever needed the latest gen cpu to really do something you couldnt do before...

yeah but what will sata3 and usb3 be good for i ask you... running several ssds in raid maybe, but who does that? and will it really make a notable diference?
and usb3... faster external hdds, but do we really need that?

[RejZoR]

TurboMode magic... that's why pointing out frequency of any of those CPUs is pointless... remember playing with 920 when it came out... it has basically always run over nominal 2.66 GHz, regardless of the core load

Is it? Mine runs at 1,9-2,0GHz most of the time when i work the usual stuff on desktop. When i hit it with encoding or games, it goes to 3,4GHz...

Couldn't agree more. It would cost me well over $1000 to go i7 and other than media encoding, I wouldn't gain much. The fact that there is still no USB3 and SATA III support makes it even more pointless. The only reason I could justify the upgrade for myself is if I was using a quad gpu system as the gains are substantial.

Worrying about USB 3.0 and SATA3 is just pointless. There will be little or no USB 3.0 devices in the upcoming 3 or more years. Companies will try to push but just look how long it took for USB 2.0 standard to become widely used.
SATA 3.0 is also not going anywhere unless they'll show us SSD drives for 200 bucks that can do 500MB/s in both ways. For HDD's and casual SSD's, not even SATA2 is fully used.

[Glow9]

Can someone clear this up for me maybe, the 870 is faster and more $$ than the 920 but why is it numbered lower?

[labs23]

^ You mean the i7 870 numbering? Maybe its because of the fact that while its i7, its for S1156 which is lower than S1366. I mean don't put the i7s for S1156 together with i7s that are currently for S1366 on the naming. Intel confused you.

[flopper]

People still comparing 3ghz cpu?
who runs a 3ghz cpu here?

4ghz+ and anything else is for the sister forum averagejoe.com

we get a dimishing return on cpu upgrade, that isnt new.
and p5 is kinda 2008.

[Glow9]

^ You mean the i7 870 numbering? Maybe its because of the fact that while its i7, its for S1156 which is lower than S1366. I mean don't put the i7s for S1156 together with i7s that are currently for S1366 on the naming. Intel confused you.

This is absolutely stupid. I am not going to be one bit surprised to see i7 get chopped. Q9550 and Q9650 which can perform almost as good as their high end i7's it just seems like they are fighting against themselves not to mention pricing. Now adding a 3rd socket into the mix.

Who's the brains behind this one? Hey I got an idea! lets create a line of overpriced niche cpu's that perform about as well as our highend affordable ones! But just wait it gets better! Now lets add a 3rd socket which is between the two already and make that one perform as good if not better than the high end overpriced niche ones too!

Anyone ever see Robin Williams how golf got created standup? This comes to mind.