The Intel Core i7 860 Review

by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST

PAR2 Multithreaded Archive Recovery Performance

Par2 is an application used for reconstructing downloaded archives. It can generate parity data from a given archive and later use it to recover the archive

Chuchusoft took the source code of par2cmdline 0.4 and parallelized it using Intel’s Threading Building Blocks 2.1. The result is a version of par2cmdline that can spawn multiple threads to repair par2 archives. For this test we took a 708MB archive, corrupted nearly 60MB of it, and used the multithreaded par2cmdline to recover it. The scores reported are the repair and recover time in seconds.

Data Recovery - par2cmdline 0.4 Multithreaded

Our Par2 test actually puts both the 860 and 870 slightly ahead of the Core i7 975. It's clear that anything faster than a Core i5 750 in this case basically performs about the same. It looks like we're starting to be bottlenecked by our SSD.

Microsoft Excel 2007

Excel can be a very powerful mathematical tool. In this benchmark we're running a Monte Carlo simulation on a very large spreadsheet of stock pricing data.

Microsoft Excel 2007 SP1 - Monte Carlo Simulation

Sony Vegas Pro 8: Blu-ray Disc Creation

Although technically a test simulating the creation of a Blu-ray disc, the majority of the time in our Sony Vegas Pro benchmark is spend encoding the 25Mbps MPEG-2 video stream and not actually creating the Blu-ray disc itself.

Sony Vegas Pro 8 - Blu-ray Disc Image Creation (25Mbps MPEG-2)

Again the Core i7 860 pulls slightly ahead of the 920 and falls short of the 870, right where we'd expect it to land.

Sorenson Squeeze: FLV Creation

Another video related benchmark, we're using Sorenson Squeeze to convert regular videos into Flash videos for use on websites.

Sorenson Squeeze Pro 5 - Flash Video Creation

The 860 and the 920 keep trading positions, but as you'd expect given the similar price points - the two perform about the same.

WinRAR - Archive Creation

Our WinRAR test simply takes 300MB of files and compresses them into a single RAR archive using the application's default settings. We're not doing anything exotic here, just looking at the impact of CPU performance on creating an archive:

WinRAR 3.8 Compression - 300MB Archive

3D Rendering Performance Gaming Performance
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  • Griswold - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    Well, you didnt go away either...
  • coolkev99 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link

    In the zorro's world, processors can only be a fixed speed. Since Intel's newest dynamically changes he thinks it's somehow cheating.

    I wonder if the zorro thinks mobile CPU power saving features are cheating when they throttle down to save energy?

    Just because a CPU can now change thier speed based on needs does not mean it's cheating. Better get used to it as this is the future of multicore CPUs.
  • vol7ron - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    You already made a similar comment in the other article. It's not overclocked, you're a moron. It's the same as saying that it underclocks as it uses more cores. That's the stock speed, which varies. Overclocking occurs when users modify the speeds beyond the specifications.

    Get over yourself AMD fanboi.
  • Nich0 - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I don't be too much of a PITA, but surely the 'real' overclocking frequencies for the 860 should be of the 21*BCLK variety, no? Because it's stock rated speed is 21*133, its overclocked-at-stock-voltage-with-turbo speed should be 21*150 instead of 22*150. Looks to me as there's some kind of turbo going on on the CPUZ screenshots. Or am I missing something?
  • iwodo - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    It is hardly surprising they are not selling well.

    Because, Nehalem didn't make as Big Jump as C2D in performance.
    It is expensive, not only the chip itself. But the platform. Pentium 4 to C2D doesn't require new memory. And in some cases doesn't require new Motherboard as well.
    Athlon Quad Core is Cheap. Consumers cares about Cores, not threads.

    Economy doesn't allow to spend money upgrading on what is already working perfectly.

    SSD offer much better value for money in terms of upgrade and investment.

    No Integrated Graphics for Nehalem yet. ( Money need to spend on Graphics. )

    Personally i am waiting for Sandy Bridge ( or even Ivy Bridge for FMA )
  • zero2dash - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link

    It doesn't?
    My socket 478 P4 3.0C would like to disagree with you, considering that it used DDR ram. Practically all of the later P4's were s775, using DDR2 boards.

    I wanted to upgrade - I bought a new board and new ram to go along with it.
  • zero2dash - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link

    Ack, frickin' quote didn't work.
    [quote]Pentium 4 to C2D doesn't require new memory.[/quote]
  • afkrotch - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link

    The move from P4 to C2D can be huge or small.

    1. new proc
    2. new mobo
    3. new memory
    4. new gpu
    5. new psu

    You were required to pick up 1-5 new parts. When I upgraded, I needed all 5.

    Stating about saving money, then saying an SSD offers much better value for money in terms of upgrade and investment. WTF. As of right now, it's probably the worst choice, unless you already have the best parts available.
  • Dobs - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link

    I think P55 may be the problem - without USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0 SATA 6gbs
    If all were included it would be a must have - even 1 of the 3 would make it very tempting.

    Perhaps they could release them like "Draft n"... That may get sales moving.
  • Griswold - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link

    I'm not so sure this is fact. Other rumors say, Intel aims for 1 million shipped chips by the end of 2009. Thats not exactly shabby, bad or "not so good". Intel, historically, has a pretty good grasp of what is possible due to their very close ties with their partners.

    http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090916PD219.html">http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090916PD219.html

    Then again, this could also be just a rumor without much truth to it. We'll have to see whos right.

    But I already know that you're right with some of what you said. I was not impressed with i7 (LGA1366). I was waiting for i5/i7 (LGA1156). And while I think it can be a good product for a relatively fair price (depending on which model you take), I cant justify ditching my Q6600 for it just yet. The best reason would be power consumption and turbo.

    Instead, I went with a SSD and got more improvement out of that than any other upgrade could possibly deliver.

    The 32nm parts may be interesting again. If not, I'll just wait for sandy bridge. Or maybe even AMDs bulldozer. My current system will take me there easily...

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