{"id":15920,"date":"2010-03-06T07:19:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T07:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=15920"},"modified":"2010-05-02T21:59:35","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T20:59:35","slug":"intel-i5-750-performance-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/intel-i5-750-performance-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel i5 750 Performance Test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-7021221536180758\";\n\/* 468x60, created 11\/11\/09 *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"1949837292\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Introduction--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Introduction<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This article serves as part two of my <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=13454\" target=\"_blank\">E6850 bottleneck investigation<\/a>. Some of you commented that because I didn\u2019t use four cores, I couldn\u2019t conclude that a quad-core processor wouldn\u2019t show a performance gain. This of course is untrue given if two cores can fully saturate a GTX285, an extra two cores won\u2019t remove that bottleneck and make the GPU go faster. As further evidence, I\u2019ll be using a quad-core processor today.<\/p>\n<p>Even though that article clearly demonstrated a faster CPU showed little to no benefit in my gaming situations, I was still growing bored of my E6850 setup. It was my intention to wait for Westmere and pick up an i5 660 or 670, which would give me a high-clocked dual-core processor with Hyper Threading. Unfortunately Intel\u2019s high pricing left a lot to be desired; even worse was the abysmal memory bandwidth and memory latency, a result of the memory controller being shifted onto the integrated graphics core.<\/p>\n<p>So I decided to pick up Intel\u2019s best bang-for-buck quad-core CPU: the i5 750.<\/p>\n<p>This article will mimic the E6850 article, and will retest the same games at the same settings to see the performance change from an E6850 to an i5 750. <em>Left 4 Dead<\/em> has also been added to the mix, which brings the total tested titles to 17, all released in 2006 or onwards. And again, the settings used are the actual settings I use when I play these games. In other words I want to see the real-world impact to my gaming rather than running a bunch of theoretical settings that I don\u2019t even use.<\/p>\n<p>In the text results, <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">MS<\/span> denotes transparency multi-sampling, while <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">SS<\/span> denotes transparency super-sampling.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Setup--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hardware (Old)<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (reference 3 GHz clock).<\/li>\n<li>4 GB DDR2-800 RAM (4\u00d71 GB, dual-channel).<\/li>\n<li>Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R (Intel G33 chipset, F7 BIOS).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Hardware (New)<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Core i5 750 (2.8 GHz, 21x multiplier set in BIOS, Turbo Boost enabled).<\/li>\n<li>4 GB DDR3-1333 RAM (2\u00d72 GB, dual-channel).<\/li>\n<li>Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3 (Intel P55 chipset, F6 BIOS).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hardware (Common)<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>nVidia GeForce GTX285 (1 GB, reference clocks).<\/li>\n<li>Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic.<\/li>\n<li>30\u201d HP LP3065 (maximum resolution 2560&#215;1600).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Software<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows XP 32 bit SP3<\/li>\n<li>nVidia driver 196.21, high quality filtering, all optimizations off, LOD clamp enabled.<\/li>\n<li>DirectX February 2010.<\/li>\n<li>All games patched to their latest versions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Settings<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16xAF forced in the driver, vsync forced off in the driver.<\/li>\n<li>AA forced either through the driver or enabled in-game, whichever works better.<\/li>\n<li>Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.<\/li>\n<li>All results show an average framerate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:2xAA--><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2xAA<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-2xaa.PNG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18053\" title=\"Text-2xAA\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-2xaa.PNG?resize=238%2C220\" alt=\"Text-2xAA\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15923\" title=\"Graph 2xAA\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2xaa.png?resize=528%2C442\" alt=\"Graph 2xAA\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2xaa.png?resize=528%2C442 528w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2xaa-300x251.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 528px) 100vw, 528px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this set of tests, we see <em>Far Cry 2<\/em> have a small performance gain of <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">7.64%<\/span> with the i5 750. The rest of the games are unchanged and fall within the margin of benchmarking error. Clearly the GTX285 is almost completely the bottleneck here, and the E6850 is more than enough to push it hard enough to expose this fact.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:1920x1200--><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">1920&#215;1200<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15927\" title=\"Text 1920\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-1920.png?resize=259%2C187\" alt=\"Text 1920\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15924\" title=\"Graph 1920\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-1920.png?resize=529%2C356\" alt=\"Graph 1920\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-1920.png?resize=529%2C356 529w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-1920-300x201.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the next set of games, we see a slight performance gain of <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">4.73%<\/span> in <em>Wolfenstein<\/em>. The rest of the games again show no performance change.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:2560x1600--><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2560&#215;1600<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15922\" title=\"Text 2560\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-2560.png?resize=260%2C323\" alt=\"Text 2560\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-2560.png?resize=260%2C323 260w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/text-2560-241x300.png 241w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15925\" title=\"Graph 2560\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2560.png?resize=529%2C559\" alt=\"Graph 2560\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2560.png?resize=529%2C559 529w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/graph-2560-283x300.png 283w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At these settings the GTX285 is the bottleneck by 100%, so the i5 750 makes absolutely no difference here.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Other Thoughts &#038; Conclusion--><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Other Thoughts<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Some people have reported that their system feels smoother in gaming with less hitching and faster load times after they moved from a dual-core to a quad-core processor. Subjectively I have yet to see any such improvements, and I have a gaming library of about 100 games under active and heavy play rotation. All of the games I tried feel the same, and their load times don\u2019t appear any faster.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the i5 750\u2019s stock cooler is the worst CPU cooler I\u2019ve ever used; it\u2019s only about half the height of the stock E6850 cooler. I never had any trouble with the E6850, but i5 750 whines and drones, sometimes even when the CPU is idle. My case (Antec 902) has ample cooling and airflow, so it\u2019s clearly the rubbish cooler at fault as it struggles to cope with the workload. I\u2019m seriously considering buying a better CPU cooler to reduce the noise, even though I don\u2019t overclock.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>So there you have it. Aside from small performance gains in two titles, the i5 750 provided zero performance gain in 15 of the 17 titles I tested today, at the settings I play them at. Meanwhile a 5870 or Fermi would provide a substantial performance gain across all titles, even if I was using my E6850 underclocked to 2 GHz.<\/p>\n<p>Once again it\u2019s clear the GPU is the biggest bottleneck here, while hard-disk speed is obviously holding back gaming load times.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll echo what I mentioned in the <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=13454\" target=\"_blank\">first article<\/a>: if you want maximum performance and image quality, buy the biggest monitor with the highest resolution you can afford, then buy the fastest GPU setup you can to feed that display. You\u2019ll get far more benefit as a whole, compared to buying for the handful of fringe titles that are truly unplayable on anything but the fastest quad-core CPU.<\/p>\n<p>After all this, I can honestly say the E6850 has been one of the finest gaming CPUs I\u2019ve ever used. It lasted me around two years and across four graphics card upgrades (8800 GTS (640 MB), 8800 Ultra, GTX260+ and GTX285). With each upgrade it pushed the GPU hard enough to provide me with substantial performance gains. And a Fermi would do exactly the same thing if I had kept my E6850 for it.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">For the latest updates from ABT, please <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?feed=rss2\" target=\"_blank\">join our RSS News Feed<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\" http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=15920\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=top title=\"Author: BFG10K\" src=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/Article-Image.PNG\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2533,7814,7],"tags":[3144,527,900,2244,34],"class_list":["post-15920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abt-news","category-articles","category-technology","tag-196-21","tag-e6850","tag-gtx285","tag-i5-750","tag-intel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}