Lots of Lynnfield Love

Intel officially launches the new “Lynnfield” CPU series and the results look like a love-fest.

Take a look at this chart:

One of the indisputable advatages of market dominance is power – power in marketing, technology and resources. Any company in this position also gets a bit paranoid about maintaining its dominance, mainly by being at least one or two steps ahead of the number two competitor. Intel has taken this to heart with its i5/i7 launch that, frankly, sets AMD back on its heels.

The reviews are now surfacing and the verdict appears uniformly positive, as indicated below:

Intel Core i5-750 and Core i7-870 (Register Hardware)

“We were deeply impressed by the performance and low power requirement of Lynnfield and feel confident that the Core i7-860 – the now-announced slightly slower (2.80-3.46GHz) sibling of the i7-870 we tested – will be the processor of choice through to the end of 2009.”

Intel’s Core i7 870 & i5 750, Lynnfield: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger (Anandtech)

“I’ll start this conclusion with what AMD must do in response to Lynnfield. The Core i5 750 is a great processor at $196, in fact, it’s the best quad-core CPU you can buy at that price today. In nearly every case it’s faster than AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 BE, despite the AMD processor costing almost another $50. Granted you can probably save some money on an integrated 785G motherboard, but if you’re comparing ~$120 motherboards the AMD CPU is simply overpriced.”

Intel launches all-new PC architecture with Core i5/i7 CPUs (ArsTechnica)

“The launch of Core i5/i7 and the P55 represent a major step forward for Intel’s desktop line, and they bring Nehalem’s performance dominance of AMD’s offerings onto the mainstream desktop.”

Second Advent of Nehalem: Core i7-870 and Core i5-750 Processors in LGA1156 Platform (Xbit Labs)

“Core i7-800 and Core i5-700 processors seem to be an excellent replacement for the LGA775 Core 2 Quad CPUs offering much higher performance at the same price. The launch of LGA1156 platform brings a real revolution to the mainstream segment. This platform immediately turns Core 2 and Phenom II CPUs into outdated solutions that can only be of interest in the sub-$200 category.”

Overclocking the Lynnfield series looks very good as well, with the i5-750 turning in a very respectable 4 GHz compared to the stock 2.66 GHz. However, this was achieved by bumping the voltage a touch from 1.35 to 1.4 volts, all with top-notch air cooling. Overall with Intel’s aggressive pricing, the Lynnfield series will cement Intel’s CPU dominance in the desktop market and looks like a sure price-performance winner for overclockers.

About Joe Citarella 242 Articles
Joe Citarella was one of the founders of Overclockers.com in 1998. He contributed as a site administrator and writer for over 10 years before retiring. Joe played an integral part in building and sustaining the Overclockers.com community.

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