Intel's back in its familiar saddle today with the unveiling of a pair of new CPUs, marking the start of a new K-series that will cater to the overclocker inside all of us. The Core i7-875K is a 2.93GHz quad-core unit, which can scale heights of 3.6GHz via Turbo Boost, or even higher if you have the patience, tenacity and appropriate cooling to make it happen. Review action for this chip shows it to be Intel's premier offering short of the enthusiastically overpriced and overpowered
Core i7-980X. Even more affordable will be the
Clarkdale-based Core i5-655K, which trots along at 3.2GHz (with a 3.46GHz gallop option), but response to it was a little more muted. It's a dual-core CPU, after all, and if you don't plan on exploiting that unlocked multiplier to achieve some madness above 4GHz, you might be better off looking elsewhere. In amidst all the mad benchmarking, we've also found a review of a Falcon Northwest i7-875K rig as well, so give it all a read if you're mulling over a desktop upgrade.
Read - Tech Report
Read - AnandTech
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Hot Hardware
Read - TweakTown
Read - Legit Reviews
posted May 28th 2010 3:29AM
Actually, if you read anandtech's review, it says the chips don't bring much better performance. The 875K does bring a huge price drop versus the 870 though.
@spin cycle It sounds like they got a less than great chip, but since it uses the same architecture it's not really worse-you just get unlocked multipliers to add to your OC armatarium. And they seem to be ignoring the fact that this will let you push the chip farther on boards or memory that wouldn't normally allow you to push the chip farther.
@tekdemon Did you read the article? They don't ignore anything. They tested the CPUs on air, on water and on a system which uses phase-change cooling to maintain -100C CPU temperatures for overclocking!
They just said the unlocking doesn't really bring anything. The new price does, but a new price for the 870 would have been just as good.
You say they got a bum sample, but Intel said they weren't using "enthusiast binning" (i.e. lots of OC headroom) on these chips.
Most of the reviews I checked don't even overclock the chip (if they tested it at all) and the ones that did (legit reviews, anand) don't even end up adjusting the CPU multiplier anyway, they only adjust the other multipliers on the chip (memory for example) which are unlocked on all Core i5s/i7s, not just the new Ks.
@spin cycle Umm that's exactly my point, they tested it using all-out methods and hardware which ignores the benefits that this would give when overclocking on motherboards that can't hit those high FSBs and using cheapo DDR3 that can't run well past stock speeds.
The unlocked multipliers mean that even if your DDR3 is stuck at 1333 you can let the CPU run at it's maximum potential, whereas with a multiplier locked unit you'd be out of luck or would have to go buy all that crazy hardware you mentioned to get more out of it.
@spin cycle And of course Intel wasn't using enthusiast binning, otherwise why would anybody buy the extreme versions of the CPU? It's luck of the draw but if you're going to roll the dice anyway it's better to have guaranteed unlocked multipliers.
Well, glad to know Intel is working. My q9550 @ 3.6ghz is doing fine without any major hiccup and I'll wait till next year and see if Intel will be introducing something newer. Hopefully something more energy efficient yet powerful and worthy to upgrade.
@cdf74dc9
Pretty much any Core i7 is significantly faster and more efficient than the Q9550.
@Raffi256
Not so dramatic that worth a full platform upgrade. Sometime they claim more energy efficient chip but really, it's "mostly" lowered clock and or cripple in some way. In my book, efficient mean maintaining clock speed while uses less power.
@cdf74dc9 I'm still gaming on a Q66 @ 3.6GHz which in benchmarks comes just short of i7 920's.Got no real incentive to upgrade, the only problem I've had with it was that GTA IV chokes on anything other than i7's
@cdf74dc9
Yeah thats my plan as well. I have my q9550 clocked in at 3.8ghz and it is more than enough for what I need. I built my rig for dirt cheap a little over a year and a half ago when the i7's were just released. A more energy efficient chip would be nice though but its 95 watts is nothing compared to what the nvidia gtx 280 uses that I have in it.
Still looking forward to the Sandy Bridge B2.
way to go intel....
Not as awesome as it sounds - the 870/875K are the overpriced parts, the 655K is only a dual core. This would actually be useful if they did unlocked versions of the 750/860/930 - i.e. the mainstream quad-cores.
"with a 3.46GHz gallop option" haha :)
Every time I see an article about Intel, all I think is that those MFers are purposely delaying USB 3.0 acceptence which delays USB 3.0 device selection as well. Dang you!
Great Intel finally offered something inline with the AMD Black line. An unlocked CPU that isn't price north of 1K that's sheer madness! However I do see that they still protected their crown jewel i7 980X by making these both LGA 1156 chips. If you want enough lanes to run a decent dual card SLI/Crossfire setup you will want x58 and the higher priced CPU's that come with it.