By now, the Lynnfield reviews are in. Here are just a few.
Certainly any new processor and platform, like the new P55 chipset, is benchmarked to death. If you take a sort of metacritic approach to the reviews, you can get a pretty good picture of how the new platform behaves in a wide array of performance metrics.
However, I took a narrower view of Lynnfield testing: digital photography processing. How does the new platform compare to the older, but more powerful X58 platform? I ran a number of different benchmarks of actual photographic applications. Let’s see how Intel’s new mainstream quad core CPU shapes up for digital photographers.
I took a look at overall performance using several professional grade applications. Each operation was performed on 100 12 megapixel images, captured with a Nikon D300. The benchmarks included:
- Adobe Camera Raw 5.4 conversion to JPEG using Auto White Balance and Auto Exposure settings.
- Bibble 4.9 conversion from RAW to JPEG using default settings.
- Noise Ninja batch noise reduction on 100 JPEG images, using default settings, but with the Nikon D300 noise profiles loaded.
- Noiseware noise reduction on those same 100 images, with default settings.
- Photoshop CS4, with a number of filters executed as a set of automated actions. This was based on the PC Magazine Photoshop test, but I used one of my own images, and added noise reduction to the script.
Lynnfield and P55 Basics
Before I dive into the results, it’s worth talking a bit about the Lynnfield platform, though the reviews I linked to earlier will cover features, speeds and feeds exhaustively. However, here are the hightlights of the new processor:
- Lynnfield consists of two product lines, the Core i5 700 series and the Core i7 800 series.
- Lynfnield differs from the existing Core i7 900 series mainly by being socket 1156 CPUs. So they have fewer pins. The memory controller is dual channel DDR3, not triple channel, as it is with the Core i7 900.
- Some of the 1156 pins in Lynnfield are allocated for PCI Express, since the PCI Express controller has been pulled into the CPU itself. So P55 is mainly an I/O chip.
- The differences between Core i5 and Core i7 are mainly clock speed and Hyper-Threading (simultaneous multithreading.)
- All Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs are quad core and have 256KB of L2 cache exclusive to each core and 8MB of shared L3 cache.
- Currently, two Core i7 800 series CPUs were announced, the Core i7 860 and Core i7 870. The 850 runs at 2.80GHz and the 870 runs at 2.93GHz. That makes both Lynnfield processors slower than the existing Core i7 950 and 975 CPUs.
- The Core i5 750 runs at 2.66GHz. It does not support Hyper-Threading.
Lynnfield requires a new chipset, the P55, which has the requisite LGA1156 socket. Since the memory controller is only dual channel, the new socket only needs 1156 pins instead of the 1366 pins sockets on X58 motherboard. This, in turn, should allow for lower costs for both motherboards and CPUs.
Of course, in its pursuit of market segmentation, Intel will keep Lynnfield clock speeds lower than the Core i7 900 CPUs, but Lynnfield CPUs will also cost less. Let’s look at Intel’s just-announced Lynnfield wholesale pricing for boxed, retail CPUs. Core i7 900 series prices are added to the list:
| CPU | Price |
| Core i5 750 (2.66GHz, 4 cores, 4 threads, dual channel DDR3-1333) | $199 |
| Core i7 860 (2.80GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, dual channel DDR3-1333) | $285 |
| Core i7 870 (2.93GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, dual channel DDR3-1333) | $555 |
| Core i7 920 (2.66GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, triple channel DDR3-1066 | $284 |
| Core i7 950 (3.06GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, triple channel DDR3-1066 | $562 |
| Core i7 975 (3.33GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, triple channel DDR3-1066 | $999 |
The anomaly is the Core i7 920. For $85 more than a Core i5 750, you get Hyper-Threading and three memory channels. Is it worth it? At the stock clock rates, it’s probably not worth it. We’ll have to see which CPU has the most overclocking headroom.
Memory quantity is also a concern. If you want to really pump up the amount of memory, then the triple channel Core i7 900’s are your best bet. It’s much easier to get to 12 or 24GB in six sockets than four. At least one motherboard maker, Gigabyte, is building a P55 motherboard using six memory sockets, but you still need to populate them in pairs, not triples.
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5 comments
Jeff says:
September 8, 2009 at 10:47 am (UTC -7 )
Loyd, I think you meant to say “12 or 24GB”, not “12 or 24MB” at the bottom of page 1.
Loyd Case says:
September 8, 2009 at 12:43 pm (UTC -7 )
Fixed, thanks. MB/GB/TB and MHz/GHz seem to be my eternal bane when it comes to typos. You see, I was *thinking* GB, but I typed MB anyway. My fingers are still living back a decade or so.
Derek says:
September 8, 2009 at 7:56 pm (UTC -7 )
The gaming tests will be interesting, especially if you can compare a dual-PCI to a single in otherwise identical box. IIRC Lynnfield moves the PCI express from the north bridge to the chip, but only a single 16x lane. Dual-GPU’s are supported, but split the x16 into 2×8.
Looks like I may ‘need’ to replace my E8400 with an i7 860 soon. For my purposes the I9 is probably not worth waiting for. Do I really need 6 cores plus HT?
Dick says:
September 18, 2009 at 8:09 pm (UTC -7 )
I’m waiting for your report on the Gigabyte P55-UD6 motherboard. I’m planning on building a new system after Windows 7 comes out – no sense in building it with Vista and having to do it again in a month or three.
Anyway, one review of this board (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/17/gigabyte_p55ud6_motherboard_review/6) notes something very weird about this board regarding its memory configuration:
“The GA-P55-UD6 has a total of six DDR3 DIMM slots. The white slots are the first bank and are color coded to signify dual channel mode as normal. These slots will accept double or single sided modules. The blue slots on the other hand are another matter. When using only two of these (4 DIMMs total), double or single side modules may be used. When populating all six DIMM slots, the blue DIMM slots are only capable of accepting single sided memory modules. Just about any module you’d probably find yourself using on this board will most likely be double sided and thus, these extra slots are of very limited usefulness.”
One of the problems with this is that certain configurations are impossible because of the requirement for single sided memory sticks for the blue slots. This is very strange.
I’ll be more than interested in your findings about this limitation.
It’s great to see you again on internet TV. Caught you on Revision3 today!
Loyd Case says:
September 18, 2009 at 10:38 pm (UTC -7 )
Actually, Kyle’s review is spot on. It’s really best to treat the UD6 as a four-DIMM board. It’s still a very good motherboard in most other respects.