Intel Core i5 UK launch - 8th September 2009

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Apparently.

Waiting to see what the prices are like before deciding whether to upgrade my games box and roll the current E8400 machine up into my study to replacement my old Athlon 64 workstation, or keep the E8400 and build a new Core2Quad machine to replace the workstation.

[spanner]

About time, cant believe how long i7 has been around and every 'newsletter' from a few retailers I get seems to be trying to flog it every month. Shame most bundles i've seen have been 500 quid plus.

Though isnt it a completely different platform? Based on the i7 though isnt it?

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Though isnt it a completely different platform? Based on the i7 though isnt it?

Yeah, the first ones will be Nehalem without hyperthreading.

Just to confuse matters even more, from next year Intel will be marketing some Core 2 as i3...

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Hmm, i5 750 is £150, cheapest mobo about £80, DDR3 is now about the same price as DDR2.

Tempted...

[Jimmie]

Go for it, think I'll go for the i7 860 to save a lot of time on rendering scenes for study work

[Simon Gymer]

If you haven't got a high end E8xxx chip or Q6xxx chip then the i5 750 looks like a good buy indeed. Gaming wise, especially single threaded gaming, they're still not raising the bar very much compared to the Core 2 Duo though. I have the E8600, so it doesn't look like much point in upgrading till they release something a bit faster still. Maybe when there is a 3.33 or higher version of the i5 it will be worth it...
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634&p=16

[spanner]

I dont think the i5 give you that much more at the mo. For a bit more you can get the old i7 ones. But give it a 6months or so and i'll see what is like out there. An i7 would be nice though!

[Aagramn]

Hopefully my new Core i5 system will arrive today, paired with a 1GB 4870 card. It's a big upgrade from my current Athlon X2/X1900 box. Merits a bounce I think. 

I'll report back when I've had a play.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Good grief, it's that Agranamamanaman chap again!

Should be a huuuuge leap forward over your Athlon.

I've decided to wait until the 32nm ones come out next year so I can actually make a step forward instead of sideways.

[Aagramn]

A broken CPU cooler mounting bracket has delayed my build. 

Agree that there isn't a strong case for upgrading from a fast Core 2 Duo to Core i5 or i7. There are a few games around that fully utilise a quad-core CPU, but not many. However, we can expect to see more in the future, so a quad-core or tri-core is a decent investment for anyone looking to buy a new system now. I hope to get a lot of life out of this system by upgrading the graphics card in 2 or 3 years.

I see my system is already obsolete with the introduction of the ATI 58XX series, and I haven't even built it yet. I wasn't expecting them to be released for another couple months. 

I'll definitely pick up GTR again some time in the future, hopefully the new PC will give me an incentive. I'll probably only race on a casual basis though. Lack of talent and setup skills makes learning a new track a very slow and painful process for me.

[Aagramn]

I've had a bit of play with the new system now. Think the core-i5 was a good investment, cost me about £90 (CPU, RAM and motherboard) over a mid-range CPU. Getting smooth frame rates in Left 4 Dead at 1920x1080 with all the details maxed, and that was with AVG doing a full system scan in the background (quad-core is a bit of a luxury, but it does have some benefits). I'm not going to bother to overclock it for now.

Haven't tried GTR2 on it yet, but rain and lighting shouldn't be a problem anymore. Hope to see you on track sometime.

Next year, I think there is a dual-core i5 coming out, running at over 3Ghz and with hyper-threading enabled for a bit less money. That would probably be an even better buy, the higher clock speed should make most apps run faster than on the i5-750, while hyperthreading will give a decent boost to anything that utilises more than 2 cores.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Next year, I think there is a dual-core i5 coming out, running at over 3Ghz and with hyper-threading enabled for a bit less money. That would probably be an even better buy, the higher clock speed should make most apps run faster than on the i5-750, while hyperthreading will give a decent boost to anything that utilises more than 2 cores.

I think the dual core will be badged as an i3, but it's the same architecture. I'm waiting for the Core i5-670 which will be 3.467GHz; that should get me a real-world increase of around 30% in ISI-based sims.

I'm still far from convinced by hyperthreading. My Atom based netbook has it and it's still noticeably less snappy than my other VIA Nano based one, which is all clock speed and good architecture.

[Aagramn]

Had a very quick go at overclocking it. Turned off the turbo-boost, and had it running at 3.6Ghz without any voltage increases. Seemed to be stable, although I only left Prime95 running for 15 minutes or so. 4Ghz should be fairly easy to achieve.

I've set the clocks back to stock again for now, as I don't need the extra horsepower at the moment. Good to know I have plenty of headroom for future upgrades though.