Core i5 / P55 Lab Update
by Gary Key on September 11, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
This has been an interesting week to say the least for those of us stuck in the labs and not at AMD's DX11 GPU press briefings. Based on feedback from the Lynnfield launch article we have spent the last couple of days running additional benchmarks to address overclocking and clock for clock requests. Yes, we do listen and respond to the comments no matter how outlandish (you know who you are) some may be at times.
I will interject a personal note here, the emails/private messages that outlined a strong case for additional research and testing certainly held a lot more weight than comments like "You are on Intel's payroll...", "Worst review ever...", and the moonshot , "Illegal benchmarking methods..". First off, if we were on Intel's payroll we would not be working here (a logical conclusion, right? ;) ) As for the other comments, everyone is entitled to their opinions. We do our best to keep an open forum and let the comments fall where they may, but offering constructive criticism and facts to back up those comments is what actually causes change, not endless shock posts or attention grabbing statements. I still have hope in people abiding by the rules of Internet Etiquette, but apparently we are still a long ways off from that happening. I will step off the soap box, well, until the next article....
Just to set this up now, our overclock comparisons will be at 3.8GHz for the Core i5/i7 and Phenom II x4 965BE processors. Why 3.8GHz, well it is an easy number for all of our processors to hit on fairly low voltages with retail or mid-range air coolers. It is also an ideal clock range for the "set it and forget crowd" interested in 24/7 overclocking. Certainly we could go higher on air or water cooling and actually ran most of our Core i5/i7 numbers at 4.2GHz for the motherboard roundups. Our Phenom II x4 965BE is the hold up for higher numbers in our clock for clock comparisons.
AMD continues to have serious problems with their Phenom II processor range clocking above 3.8~4GHz on air with a 64-bit operating system. Unfortunately, there is nothing AMD can do to correct this in the current stepping, but they are actively working on improvements with each processor release. In fact, the latest Athlon II x2 processors are the first products we have that allow for 24/7 stable operation at 4GHz under Windows 7 x64. The quad cores are still lagging although our latest retail 965BE is showing promise around 3.92GHz in early testing. I state this now so it does not come as surprise later.
I will post several benchmark results later today based on our motherboard test suite. Anand will provide a more in-depth analysis next week along with an updated look at the Core i7/860. He might even have a surprise announcement from AMD. In the meantime, I have just about completed this additional testing and will return my focus on completing the first (of many) P55 motherboard article(s) that will be up in a couple of days. Our first review will cover the Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 among others. We recently received several other micro-ATX P55 motherboards and will look at those shortly. For now, this board is a perfect match for the Core i5/750 for our mainstream audience looking to upgrade an older platform.
Our graph below is an example of the information we will provide late today. Hopefully, this type of information will be useful for your purchasing decision along with our commentary about the results. I know there is not a Core 2 product listed, that will be forthcoming in the near future.
9/11 Update - I am still working on the FarCry 2 and H.A.W.X. benchmarks so the short update will be delayed until tomorrow morning.
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faxon - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
i should also mention, this is with the 860 costing $30 more than the 920 at microcenter right now, and the fact that the S1156 boards with the PCIe lanes i need being at least $180-200 out the door, and ram being negligible since i would be selling another system when i get this one anyway. the 920 would be easier to overclock using less voltage, i dont care about the PCIe latency reduction since i would be using a bridge chip anyway, and im a RAM whore and an overclocker (4.2ghz quad and rising) so the S1366 is more ideal anyway in most ways. im just really eager to see if the hydra is all that it's cracked up to be, and i wanna see some OC results on the P55 FTW vs the EVGA X58 micro and standard (as far as ease of OC and max OC goes).Nich0 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
At the moment it looks like the 920 is a bit cheaper than the 860 so I think it's normal that people should question the wisdom of i7 1156 as opposed to i7 1366. But the 920 has been around a while so the retail channel has matured (lower prices, availability, stepping). When the 860 has reached the same level of maturity (if it does), I'd be surprised if the 860 is not cheaper than the 920. Anyway that could be a moot point because by then socket 1366 may have gone 6-core.strikeback03 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Thanks for the additional tests. I didn't bother posting in the comments of the launch article as they were already extremely long, but I am also one of those looking for clock-for-clock comparisons. As the application I would be designing for is Photoshop, I'd want HT. This puts the i5 out of consideration for me, and as the platform cost of an i7 860 isn't a lot different than a i7 920, I approach it more along the lines of "Prove why I shouldn't just go straight to the 920 and keep the door open for future higher-performance options". For either one I would apply some easy overclock ( I was thinking more like 3.3GHz) and would be happier if the motherboard could do this automatically. I'm basically coming from more of a computer-as-a-tool than computer-as-a-hobby perspective, so I look forward to the new results.Scali - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Since my previous message may have gotten lost in the flood of flamewars, I'll just briefly state it here again, seems appropriate.I'd like you guys to also spend some time on reviewing the onboard audio features, particularly since there seems to be a new generation of VIA onboard chips. It's hard to get any info on what these are really capable of, and how mature the software/drivers are that ship with them. It could mean the difference between having to get an addon soundcard or not, when buying a motherboard.
Gary Key - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
I will have a short synopsis on the audio choices provided on the P55 boards in the motherboard articles. Based on the updated VIA chipsets and Windows 7, we are thinking right now that a separate piece on the state of on-board audio would be wise. I will see what we can do to get that done this month. In the meantime, I like the VIA 2020 better than the Realtek ALC 889a from an overall perspective, the drivers still need a little work but audio quality is better in my opinion.Scali - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
That would be nice, Gary.One feature in particular that has made a big difference for me, was the support for realtime Dolby Digital Live encoding. When Realtek started offering this feature on their onboard chips, it meant that you could get digital 5.1 output to any Dolby-capable amp/home stereo. You were no longer depending on the analog outputs, which required lots of wires and generally was of poor quality with onboard solutions.
Later I got a Soundmax, which could do DTS Live encoding. The sound quality was excellent.
(I'm not talking about having stereo sound upconverted to 5.1, but about having 5.1 audio from games and such encoded in Dolby or DTS in realtime, and sent over the digital output).
So I'm particularly interested in what the VIA chips can do in that respect.
MadMan007 - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Just remember that there's a difference between judging chipsets and implementatins of said chipset. Especially for analog use there will be variation among implementations.yyrkoon - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Now comes the fine grain; This is where subjective opinion comes into play. What is "reliable" ? Apparently Subjective. What is too much attention on a per name brand basis ? Apparently Subjective.Let us toss out a fictional example.
Lets say product name A get a lot of attention, and has a strong "fan base" Product A is typically known as being the fastest on a per product test basis, but in the IT sector is not known as reliable. Product A gets tons of raving reviews despite this, even despite the fact that from time to time they also have some very serious problems. Product A does very well in the OEM sector ( probably with tons of OEM support from them working together as partners or not ).
On the flip side of things products name B has been in the business for an equal amount of time, or possibly longer. Product B is known mostly as a very reliable product. Product B is also nearly as fast as Product A ( some times even very rarely surpassing that of Product A ), and the people in the IT sector have no qualms putting this product into a personal system, or even in a production server. Product B is not without its flaws, but fewer by comparrison, and some serious flaws rarely. Product B has also pioneered several features that are still in use today by many product names, but is now out of the retail sector after one such serious flaw, and a bit of financial troubles.
So, if "review site A" gives raving reviews of a product name continually in favor despite the fact that this product will not run countless hours/days/months without crashing ( because this is not important to them ). Then of course review site A is going to get some flack for their very public words. However, ANY OS can be very, very stable with the right hardware. Yes this even includes Windows. It will probably never be perfect, but solid hardware, with solid software backing it can make a huge difference. I've been there. am there, and hoping to continue to be there in the future.
Sadly for review site A however, I take their words with a grain of salt, and have to back whatever is said on this site with countless hours of research on my end. That is ok though, I do not pay review site A for anything, and they are still very informative even if in not exactly the same way I wish.
yacoub - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
You've certainly piqued my interest: Where can I read about Intel instability in server environments? Being a mere mortal, I only know what I read at hardware review sites like Anandtech, so I haven't heard about this before.yyrkoon - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
Assumption is the mother of all . . . . ups.CPU's very rarely exhibit serious issues in general, and if we're going to get into that Intel has always been very solid. This also is in the context of new parts.I am sure the mention of Intel as a specific brand in this blog was a generalization. As a matter of a fact, I am a long standing "fan" of AMD. I am glad AMD is around, and in in the past have used *many* AMD CPU's ( also Cyrix if you want to get into that as well ). Now days, I actually prefer Intel CPUs. The *only* problem I have ever personally had with Intel is that in the past, their CPUs were not obtainable simply because of the outrageous cost for many people. Now days, and probably within the last 4 or more years, their prices have been very reasonable. This is not to say that Intel as a whole is not without their problems. Read: the company, not the product.
The context of my post was more along the lines of motherboards, memory, power supplies, video cards etc. And while I left out details on purpose, the example was loosely based on real events. I bet Jarred knows which products I was talking about. Because I have talked about them more than once over the last several years. Also this example was an extreme generlization.