Then and Now: A decade of Intel CPUs compared, from Conroe to Haswell

[Jedidiah]

I am one of these people that "claim" to be running an overclocking socket 775 cpu. I am still running a QX9650 @ around 4.6Ghz and it works fine for me. Lol my works pc is better in a way its a i7-3770. I do want to look at an i7 one day in my home rig as I do a lot of encoding and transcoding and I am sure i7 with boost performance for me dramatically but so far for gaming at least there are very few games that are hindered by the cpu performance so I am happy for the time being.

The power consumption of a QX9650 @ around 4.6GHz would be hideous

I always find it interesting when someone buys extreme high-end hardware that is essentially very poor value when compared to the much cheaper alternatives and then keeps it for a crazy long period to time.

I always imagine that those buying the $1000 EE processors upgrade every other day

To me it makes more sense to buy more ‘sensible hardware’ and upgrade ever year or two.

Anyway thanks for commenting it is certainly interesting to hear what readers are still working with.

My machine was a bit ludicrous when I bought it but I find that even after 5 years I am hard pressed to replace it. It was not really that expensive when I bought it but it would take a considerable (bigger) expenditure now to get a significant upgrade.

 

[Carlie Coats]

About 3-D Particle Movement: This is one of those places where compiling for the processor's (enhanced) instruction set can make a great difference. Here it would be really interesting to see two tables: one for a "vanilla" executable, and the other with executables targeting the specific processors.

It is known, for example, that on SandyBridge some CFD benchmarks see as much as an 85% performance improvement for compiling them to use the AVX instruction-set (e.g., "-O3 -xAVX" instead of jusrt "-O3"). For those of us who do scientific computing, it is well worthwhile to compile processor-specific executables, and it would be useful to know what final performance we can expect for doing so, before we spend a mint on a new server. (Haswell's AVX2, for example, has been underwhelming, giving at most a 20% performance boost when in the raw abstract, it should have been capable of giving an additional boost beyond AVX as big as AVX was over "vanilla".)

 

[SvDKILLSWITCH]

Interesting comparisons here, really making me consider what to do as far as upgrades are concerned.

Up until recently I was on a P55-based i5 750 @ 2.66 GHz, and my father on a P965-based Core2 Duo E6300 @ 1.86 GHz. After acquiring a near complete Z77-based system for not that much money, I am now on a Z77-based i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz and my father has my old P55-based i5 750.

I decided I'd use the left over parts to make a basic "gaming" PC for my brother, but the E6300 leaves something to be desired in terms of performance. Paired with an older GeForce GTS 250 (essentially a 9800 GTX for those familiar), it barely gave out 30fps in Minecraft with Optifine installed, and I know for a fact that the GTS 250 is far more capable than that. This particular sample also doesn't like to be overclocked at all, though that might be more to do with the RAM and motherboard.

Looking at upgrades my options are something like a Q9400 for about AU$60, a Xeon L5420 for about AU$40 plus a slight mod to the 775 socket, or waiting to see how much a Q9400+mobo combo will go for (I could then build another PC out of all the parts but that's another topic).

Realistically given budget and component constraints, those are the only real upgrade paths but it's quite amazing to see how a lowly Celeron compares to what was once a beastly Core2 Quad on performance, especially taken in context with power consumption.

 

[veLa]

Strange use of notorious in the article. It's a bad thing these chips overclocked well?

 

[Steve]

Strange use of notorious in the article. It's a bad thing these chips overclocked well?

Why? Look up all the meanings of the word.

 

[Per Hansson]

Thanks for this article, it helps to put things in perspective!
I bought a 780 TI some time ago, was meaning to upgrade my aging motherboard:
8 year old S775 Maximus Formula with a Xeon CPU running at 3.6Ghz but never got around to it.
Then again it runs quite fine as it is, we will see once the fingers start tickling enough.
Though I almost find it more interesting to read about new hardware than to actually buy it.
My how things have changed compared to 10 years ago!

 

[commanderasus]

I have a Asus Commando 775 running a E8400 and 4gb of ram. I used it for years running racing games on it and surfing the internet. The only thing I upgraded 5 years ago was the video card and bigger hard drive (ssd's were not out yet) when I built my x58 system I gave the computer as a birthday gift to my business partner's boy. He has been using it now for over 3 years and no problems.

 

[Phr3d]

Late to the game like usual, but I have (begged) asked in the past if the i5-2500k@4GHz could be used as the 'baseline' CPU when reviewing CPUs, mainly because your typical brain-dead user could drop the thing into nearly any mobo, press a button for 4GHz (on the Stock, junk cooler) and never think about it again. It was relatively inexpensive, and down-right cheap if it still performs well enuf. Dunno what 4GHz would have done to the comparo-numbers, but since it was the 'stock' no-talent-required speed for many/most buyers, it would be nice to know.

I wonder how many are still doing daily-duty out there (I know my nephew really likes his hand-me-down).

 

[DW7575]

Seriously, you actually went and used DDR3 1066 for the S775 cpus?
When I bought my E8400 system I very specifically chose DDR2 1066 for it, because tests generally showed that to be clearly faster than even DDR3 1333.
DDR3 1066 often had trouble competing even with DDR2 667!

So, you´re running all S775 chips handicapped here. You really ought to run them with DDR3 1600 as well. And preferably with DDR2 1066, as S775 was more sensitive than later architechtures.

Another important thing in regards to the S775 chips, Intel´s use of the sad old and very ineffective FSB was another major handicap for them. But most chips with a base FSB at 333 would run fine with just upping it to 400. I did that with my E8400 within an hour after OS install, and it kept running like that until this spring when it got replaced.

Basically, you might want to add tests with higher FSB, with and without OC, Core2 was so extremely easy to OC that it is realistic to include comparisons with OC S775 chips.
Might also want to include a test looking at raw performance(newer cpu:s rely a lot on SSE style additions and the like, and I found that my E8400@3.6Ghz with DDR2 1066C5 could outrun i5s up until at least Sandy Bridge in some stuff, usually when it fit completely into the big fast L2 and dealt more with raw performance than optimised performance.

And my replacement 4790K, the main improvement in performance that I notice from it outside of games, is the addition of a SSD, and having 32GB RAM instead of 4GB.
On the desktop, it actually feels a tiny bit more sluggish, though I think that´s mostly because of running the annoying Windows 7 instead of W-XP...

 

[Peter Farkas]

Nice article, good read, Thanks Techspot.

I love to see how the i3 performes in games compared to the fx-8350. Humiliating...

 

[needforsuv]

I had a E8500 with a stock cooler which constantly ran high into the 70 80 and 90 c's it grenaded ifself in like 2 years (BSOD hell and errors everywhere) so I replaced it with a i7 2600 and thats still fine now
same story with the gtx 560 that came with it **** itself (died) in just 3 years and my attempt to put the 9500 gt into the i7 machine at a temporary gpu also failed as it only lasted 5 minutes before dying
I now have a 980ti

before all this I had a P4 system which failed in 3ish years because the usb power dropped balls low and I cant use anything properly without a powered hub
moral of story:
dont buy low/mid end stuff for high end work (gaming, cad etc)

 

[Oscar Bandy]

May I know how the memory bandwidths are calculated? In relation to Author saying "We were struggling to get yy GiB/s" or are they taken off Intel's specs?

 

[Vogonp42]

Did you ever hear the tragedy of i7 2700k The 32nm? I thought not. It's not a story that Intel would tell you. It's a CPU legend. i7 2700k was a CPU of the Intel, so powerful and so wise it could use the cores to influence the fps to create performance… He had such a knowledge of the cheap side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from upgrading. The cheap side of the cores is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his human everything he knew, then his human upgraded him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from upgrading, but not himself.