Intel Lynnfield; Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Evaluation

Value
According to Intel the Core i7 870 will sell for $560 while the Core i5 750 will go for $196. This puts the Core i7 in the upper end of the mainstream and matches its performance as well. For the Core i5 we see Intel meeting AMD on the playing field swinging. They now have a CPU that can meet AMD pricewise and beat them performance wise at that same price point. This is not good for AMD’s marketing strategy. In the recent past they have maintained that the Phenom II can outperform a similarly priced Intel CPU. With the Core i5 things have changed. 

Conclusion
Lynnfield is an impressive architecture. It serves to reduce the cost of Nehalem technology in both dollars and power. At the same time Intel has upped the performance bar for the mainstream. They have entered this market at two very important places; entry level pricing and high-performance [for the mainstream] and while there will be CPUs in-between the Core i5 750 and the i7 870 will be the most popular.

Intel has also struck back at AMD on the overclocking field. The Core i7 1366 CPUs were not very overclocking friendly with the average person and without the air of super cooling only the 920 was going to give you great clocks. Again Lynnfield changes that; the Core i5 750 was easily overclocked to 4.2 GHz completely stable. We are certain that with a little more time and tweaking we can get more out of it as well. So the playing field is changing rapidly AMD looks set to lose its most important marketing advantage over Intel and Core i5 and i7 1156 CPUs will gain good market share. They are impressive in many ways and perform very well even without triple-channel memory. I hope that AMD has an answer to this out in the near future; otherwise it looks like it will be a very "blue" 3rd and 4th quarter for AMD.