The Clarkdale Review: Intel's Core i5 661, i3 540 & i3 530
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 4, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
ASUS Saves the Day: Simulated Core i3s
This is the board Intel sent for today's Clarkdale reviews:
It looks cool but it doesn't offer any overclocking features at all. You can't even adjust memory frequency or timings. It's like using a motherboard from ten years ago, just more stable.
The problem is Intel only sent us a Core i5 661 for review. A $196 Core i5 661. And we had no way of underclocking it to simulate a Core i3, the arguably more interesting CPU from today's launch.
I tried some of our P55 boards and had no luck underclocking the chips either. Apparently existing P55 boards need some BIOS help before we'll get that sort of functionality. Thankfully Raja had one of ASUS' boards in house for his upcoming H57 coverage - the P7H57DV-EVO. He confirmed that this board would let me disable turbo mode and decrease the clock multiplier on our i5 661. A FedEx shipment later and we're on track to providing an actually useful review.
ASUS' feature-filled H57 board
Today you'll see results from the Core i5 661 as well as a simulated Core i3 540 and Core i3 530. The GPU clocks are running at the 661's speed for these two simulated chips, but I didn't run any IGP tests with them so it doesn't matter. The uncore clocks are also possibly higher but I'm still waiting for Intel to confirm what the i3 uncore is supposed to be clocked at. In any case, the i3 530/540 results you see here should be close enough to shipping speed. And you can thank ASUS for that.
MSI was also kind enough to send us their H57M-ED65 for use in today's review
The Test
| Motherboard: | ASUS P7H57DV- EVO (Intel H57) Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) MSI DKA790GX Platinum (AMD 790GX) Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H (AMD 790GX) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15) Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) ATI Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7 x64) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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Jamahl - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
If this is a sign of things to come from intels 32nm, AMD must be laughing their asses off.Every one of these cpu's is an overpriced piece of garbage.
ereavis - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Phenom II X2 550 should be on this list, it's the direct competitor to the i3 -- dual core with real cache. It beats the Athlon II X4 processors and the Athlon II X2 don't even belong.ereavis - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
blasted no edit function. The 550 is also about the same price point.Guess I didn't combine criticism with the fact that this review was exactly what I've been waiting for and very well written, I like the added IGP page as I'm sitting on a 785 IGP while discrete cards are in between releases. All of which may get passed on to my mom's dying Sempron if an I3 deal pops up.
Also minor correction, the Phenom II 925 is an X4. Where are the release dates?
SilentSin - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I second your question to Intel about the pricing of the 32nm i5 chips...who the hell is going to buy that? The i3's are looking pretty sweet as an alternative to an AMD HTPC platform at that low price point, though. March should make for an interesting competition once AMD launches their new RD890G (4350 based) chipsets. I'm guessing those will thoroughly trounce the GMA part on these chips as well as having quite a few features that the Intel HD stuff can't do, but at least Intel put something up that isn't completely laughable for once.Cogman - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
x264 is NOT a codec. Let me repeat that, x264 is NOT a codec. It is an ENCODER. The video output from x264 is in the H.264 standard (or codec if you like).Saying that x264 is an alternative to H.264 is retarded. It isn't an alternative, it USES the H.264 standard. Its like trying to say that mySQL is an alternative to the Ansi SQL standard. It isn't an alternative, it is an implementation of it.
puffpio - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
hahaha..that always gets on my nerves too!but you can take it as a compliment that x264's popularity is strong enough that people mistake it for h264..
people make the same mistake with divx, kleenex, qtip, xerox, etc...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
My apologies for sounding like a fool :-) I've updated the text. I just meant that it was an alternative to closed source H.264 encoders but my phrasing was absolutely horrendous for that purpose.Thanks for pointing out the error :)
Take care,
Anand
proneax - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I would like to see you measure the power consumption on the DH55TC using the integrated graphics.Legitreviews shows Idle/Load of 49/99W for the 661 in that setup.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Agreed - I'll do it as soon as I'm back in the office. Just gotta survive CES :)Take care,
Anand
medi01 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Dual core 3.3Ghz CPU + Radeon 5870 consuming only 110 watt at load???