Multi-threaded evaluation
| CINEBENCH R10 64-bit - multi-CPU render | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 14198 | 14114 | 10622 | 7488 | 10850 | 11330 |
CINEBENCH laps up as many cores as you can throw at it - be they physical or virtual. The Core i5 661 is 45 per cent faster than a Core 2 Duo E8500, with most of that gain made up by architecture improvements and hyper-threading, rather than clockspeed.
However, price-comparable quad-core chips have the beating of Clarkdale
| Pov-ray 3.7.0 beta 34 - 64-bit | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 2679.45 | 3072.05 | 2272.84 | 1451 | 2152 | 2425 |
The situation is even more pronounced when rendering with Pov-ray. Native quad-core processing is the way to go if you really need to hammer the CPU.
| StaxRip X264 + AAC encoding - pass one | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 213 | 209 | 277 | 407 | 286.67 | 253.5 |
| StaxRip X264 + AAC encoding - pass two | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 177 | 174 | 232 | 360 | 244.67 | 212 |
The media-encoding test's results keep Clarkdale/Core i5 661 competitive against quality £150 CPUs, although AMD's price-walloped Phenom II X4 965 BE and Intel's Lynnfield Core i5 750 are better-suited to the task.
CPU performance summary
Hewn from a Nehalem architecture and improved by subtle additions by Westmere, the dual-core Core i5 661 is a fundamentally better performer than the also-dual-core Core 2 Duo E8500. That said, the '661's asking price brings heavyweight quad-core competition into play, and such is the aggressive pricing by AMD and Intel, that we'd be inclined to look at them in favour of the Core i5.
The advice, above, is isolationist as it looks at CPU performance alone. Let's turn our attention to the GPU's effectiveness and then consider power consumption.
