Intel Lynnfield; Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Evaluation

Synthetics
For our performance testing we like to have a combination of synthetic and real-world testing.  For Synthetics we have the usual bank of tests from FutureMark, Maxon, Sisoft, and HyperPi.

These tests cover raw performance and potential; This side of testing brings out the basics of the CPU on its own while our real-world testing covers actual usage.

So for the numbers crowd; let’s get started with two of the industry standards for benchmarking system and gaming performance.

Futuremark's PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage is a suite of tests designed to give an easily reproducible result. It is also often used for bragging rights.

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In the case of Lynnfield, we find that the bragging rights go to Intel.

3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is the second in the twin tests from FutureMark. This one turns to gaming. It is one of the first tests to use a complete DX10 pipeline for the rendering loops. We also see the first full-scale usage of PhysX in a gaming test.

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Again Intel takes the top scores and when overclocked the Core i5 750 even beats the i7 975.

Sisoft Sandra
Next up we have Sisoft’s Sandra up on the board. Here we see the numbers that represent the raw potential of our CPUs.

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In all of the tests in Sandra we see that the new Lynnfields hold their own very well and fall right into line with the market space they are aimed at. We also see the potential performance when overclocked.

Cinebench R10
This test from Maxon [the makers of Cinema 4D) covers CPU based rendering. The test renders a single file using a single CPU and then again using all the available CPUs.

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In both Single and Multi-Core rendering the Intel CPUs take the prize. The Core i7 870 fall into 3rd place just behind the i7 965 while the Core i7 750 is in 4th. When overclocked this pair of CPUs takes the first and 2nd place fairly easily.

HyperPi 0.99
HyperPi is a great test to find out how well a CPU can handle large amounts of math based information. With HyperPi you have a single instance of SuperPi Mod 1.3 running on each logical and physical core. This puts a great deal of stress on the CPU and also on the internal memory controller.

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Here our results surprise us. It seems that without the overhead of trying to push two full instances through each core the i5 can really crunch the numbers. This was unexpected, we had really thought that the lack of triple channel memory and hyperthreading would hurt the Core i5 but that was simply not the case.

Photoshop CS4
Photoshop is an industry standard image manipulation application. It is great for not only editing photographs but also for creating original content. For out testing here we used the Driverheavn Photoshop script. This is a custom built action that puts a stock image through a series of filters and allows you to record the time each takes to run.

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I am sure you have figured out the deal here. Again the Lynnfield LGA 1156 CPUs do very well at stock speeds and simply great when overclocked.