Intel's Core I5

Anyone have anything useful about this? Obviously price wise they are more in the ballpark of affordable BUT has anyone seen a review of how it compares to the old I7s and AMD's Phenom IIs?

FatherXmas where are you when I need you? LOL I'm planning on a new build soon (a cash infusion is imminant) and was planning on going with a Phenom II x4 945 but this may change my mind.

Learn me something oh COH tech GODS!!!

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...d-cpu-review/1

Not so fast
This write-up shows the I5 doing very well against the 920.

There's very little in it with 1366 and 1156. 1366 has capacity for an extra channel of RAM, the prospect of 6 and 8-core chips, and fast SLI/CrossFire. 1156 is cheaper and needs more cooling to overclock well, due to the integrated PCIe controller (you need to overvolt to keep it stable). The decisive factor is cost.

So let's 'ave a butchers.

I priced up a socket 1156 set; CPU, motherboard, and RAM. I used the Core i7 860 and an ASUS motherboard called the... uh, it was a really long set of numbers. It came to £405.26.

I also priced up a comparable 1366 set, with an i7 920, the ASUS P6T SE (see, much easier name!), and the same set of RAM as the other set (Corsair XMS, DDR2-1333, 4GB of it). It comes to £424.84.

So. Nineteen more quids and you go from the boy socket to the Man socket. I should clarify that there's no penalty for going dual-channel on a triple-channel motherboard; it will save you a lot of money. Should you want to go 6 or 8 core later on, and should you actually use all that power, the extra channel will help.

These new socket 1156 boards seem to be too new, too expensive. I know that the chipset is much cheaper than the X58 found in 1366 boards, so it must just be early price-gouging. The 1366 P6T costs £140, while a 1156 board of the same class is actually near the same price. That smacks as a bit of a ripoff. Hopefully, in a week or two, prices will be more reasonable. If not, 1366 will have more to look forward to.

I should mention the turbo on these new 1156 chips is much more aggressive than 1366 chips. Look at the benchmarks on Anandtech and decide for yourself.

I found this article quite informative myself.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...e-i5,2410.html

Then there's the one at The TechReport.

Now the important thing to remember is at it's price point you should be comparing the i5-750 to a Core 2 Quad Q9400 and Q9550 or the Phenom II X4 955 and not the older more expensive i7-920.

And like costume wings on the first day of Issue 9 the prices of the Socket 1156 CPUs are drifting upwards relative to Intel's suggested box prices due to demand. The i5-750 is actually $10 more expensive today than yesterday evening.

The two things the 750 is missing that the i7-8xx and 9xx have is hyper-threading. Plus the Turbo-boost auto overclocking doesn't increase as much as the i7-8xx line.

Also of note, the i5 can not use Hardware Virtualization according to FX's linked article. So no XP mode in Win7! Thanks for thr link FX, was a good read.

Yeah, I... still don't know what to make of the i5. It's Nehalem goodness, but it lacks hyperthreading, VT, more turbo, doesn't overclock as well, and isn't that much cheaper than an 860 or something. That's before you take the rollercoaster prices into account.

This new chip confuses me. I don't know whether to recommend it or not.

I'd go with LGA 1366. It's a bit more of a monetary investment but it'll probably last longer, as Intel plans to continue to release new 1366 CPUs. Lynfield kind of fills a weird middle ground and doesn't really seem worth it when you an spend a little more and get much better on the original i7s

ya know FX, I just re-read that article...and I haven't the foggiest where I saw it. I must have been doing too many things at once. For some reason I remember seeing a chart, but right now can not for the life of me remember where and my history has hundreds of pages listed for the last day.

I apologize for the erroneous information and will take better care not to post while distracted to reduce the chance of passing on inaccurate information.

That's alright there is a lot of panicky posts by people confused over what the lack of VT-d means and most wrongly assume that it is a "bad thing". I personally feel that this issue is a lot like the lack of Dx10.1 on nVidia video cards or that AMD Phenoms don't support SSE4.1 and 4.2, it's a non-issue.

An important thing I would like to warn people about is P55 motherboards, appearances can be deceiving. While the P55 allows the integrated PCIex16 bus to be split in two, allowing two PCIex16 slots (driven as x8) on the motherboard, not all motherboards with two PCIex16 slots are configured that way.

One for example, the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R, for reasons I can not fathom, has the 2nd PCIex16 slot tied to four PCIe channels on the P55 instead of allowing the integrated, primary PCIe controller on the CPU to be split on demand between the two PCIex16 slots as most MB do. Instead they tie four of the eight PCIe channels on the P55 to the second PCIex16 slot. The P55 is tied to the CPU with a much narrower bus than old school the Core 2 FSB, it wasn't meant to saturate that connection with video data. I mean if you are going to offer the appearance of multiple video card support with a second slot, why do it in a way that offers a sub optimal performance? Also it doesn't support nVidia SLi unlike their costlier MBs that actually split the primary PCIex16 for two cards and on some add a third slot again using four PCIe channels from the P55 to drive it. Asus does something similar with their 3 PCIex16 slot, P55 motherboards.

Personally I would wait a month or two before jumping all over the P55 motherboards, there is bound to be couple of BIOS tweaks within that time frame to clean-up unforeseen problems once they get into the field.

I5 Earlier adopters will be worse off than if they bought I7, wait a few months or go straight for I7. Only when boards and chips are available in real quantities will direct price comparisons be useful.

Also aren't Intel jumping to 32nm in the not too distant future?

Me I'm sticking with AMD... the performance may be less surreal but I can upgrade piecemeal and not have to wait until I can afford in effect a whole new system.

To my knowledge, Intel is using the excess in 45nm manufacturing to put out Core i5s. They just disable a few features so they don't interfere with their high-end chips then throw them out.

And I forgot to mention, the i5-5xx and i5-6xx Clarkdale CPUs will also have an on carrier (but not on the same chunk of silicon with the CPU) yet another under performing Intel graphics core. Oh boy.