PricingThis section I always find the most difficult one to comment on, because the price-argument is all too often used in an incorrect manner. First of all, discussing prices of high-end products is pointless: if you want the ultimate performance, money simply shouldn't be an issue. However, for most people, including myself, price does matter. The most common situation is where a buyer has a certain price range and wants to find the most performance for that money. That's why we lined up the following comparison, based on the prices on Geizhals.eu. We looked up the current price for the new 1156 products and tried to find a 775, 1366 and AM3 cpu alternative pretty much equal to the price of the 1156 processor. Next to that, we also listed the cheapest motherboard available for that CPU (note: for 775 we chose a P45/DDR3 platform!) and the 10th cheapest motherboard to indicate the scaling of the prices. Let's have a look.
As for the CPU's, it seems that the LGA1156-based products are very well-priced: for the money you spend on an LGA1156 product, you can get an LGA775 at pretty much the same clock frequency, an 1366 at pretty much the same clock frequency and an AM3 a bit higher clocked. The beauty of this is that:
- LGA775 is clock-per-clock slower
- The turbo-mode on LGA1156 is SO extensive (upto 6x133 more!) that it surpasses the AM3 in clockspeed ánd closes the gap with the equally priced LGA1366 product.
Looking at the motherboard prices, it's become very clear that the LGA1156 platform is more than just a performance boost. The LGA1366 is too pricy and the LGA1156 is actually not that expensive!
EvaluationUnlike what mostly happens when I have to formulate an opinion about newly released technology, as quite often it requires a series of well-balanced arguments, I can be quite short about the Core i5:
clock-per-clock it's faster than the Core 2 Quad series, but a bit more expensive and it's cheaper than Core i7, but thanks to the excellent Turbo Mode not that much slower. In other words, the Core i5 750 and i7 860, which are both well-priced products, are worth to consider if you are planning an upgrade as with a little bit of tuning and price-watching you can get a configuration that is as cheap as Core 2 Quad but performs equal to a Core i7. The Core i7 870, on the other hand, is priced outside the reach for most mainstream purposes.
Many people had hoped last year that the Core i7 would replace Core 2, stating that Intel is making a big error by releasing yet another product range on the market, but I'm strongly convinced that AMD with its Phenom II platform has taken the biggest hit here. Before the Core i5, when there was a significant price difference between Core i7 and Core 2 Quad, the purchase of the Phenom II platform could be justified by looking at the price/performance ratio, but as the Core i5 is a lot more performant than the Core 2 Quad ánd a lot cheaper than the Core i7 I would actually recommend a Core i5 platform over a Phenom II. Note that I don't state that Phenom II is a bad product, not at all, but current price/performance rating not favoring it.
Intel Core i5 750 recommended for
As for the two P55-based motherboards used in this review I would like to refer you to the upcoming motherboard round-up. On the last moment we received Gigabyte's UD6 sample so we thought it would be best to compare both the UD3 and GD80 to another board in one article. Maybe I can just say that both motherboards did what they had to do and both are a good choice.
Conclusive thoughtsTo end with, I'd like to say that there are still a couple of subjects left to be dealt with when talking about Core i5; for instance the power consumption and the in-game performance difference. We'll be seeing a lot of new LGA1156-based products in the near future as well as some crazy memory overclocks (which I haven't discussed in this article either), but I prefer to take my time to investigate and post my findings in different articles. Oh, for power consumption numbers I would really like to refer to the article posted on
LostCircuits.com as I found their test methodology and the conclusions based on the data are one of the more correct and, maybe, better I've seen so far. Link:
Intel's Lynnfield: More Than a CPU .
To end with, I would like the following people for providing the necessary hardware for this article:
Manu from Tones for providing the Core i7 965 and Core 2 Quad 9550
Eric and Leona from MSI for providing the Core i5 750, Core i7 850 and MSI P55-GD80
Steeve from AMD for providing the AMD Phenom II X4 965
Ron from Coolermaster for providing the LGA1156 bracket for the V8
Tobias from OCZ Technology for providing the OCZ Freeze cooling paste
Bernice and Sibren from Gigabyte for providing the P55-UD3, the M745GT-UD3H and the EP45T-UD3LR
Jason Shek for the ANS-9010 from Acard Technology
And of course the entire Madshrimps team for giving me the time to finish this article, even though I didn't make NDA, and the support during the testing. And, of course, you readers for still finding to motivation to read the one millionth review of the Core i5!
'Till the next time!
