Final Words
Perhaps this is a bit anticlimactic, but the Core i7 860 performs exactly where you'd expect it to. It's faster than a Core i5 750, faster than a Core i7 920 and slower than a Core i7 870. As I noted in The Lynnfield Follow Up, overclocking is much easier on Bloomfield (LGA-1366) thanks to the absence of an on-die PCIe controller. It's not impossible on Lynnfield, it's just effortless on Bloomfield.
My recommendations from the initial Lynnfield review still stand, you'll want to opt for Bloomfield processor if you care about:
1) High-end multi-GPU performance (or other uses of high bandwidth PCIe)
2) Stock Voltage Overclocking
3) Future support for 6-core Gulftown CPUs
In terms of cost effectiveness however - the Core i7 860 is the way to go. With cheaper motherboards and higher operating frequencies than a Core i7 920, for the majority of users the 860 will be the better pick. Here's where the discussion gets interesting however.
A year ago, $284 for a Core i7 920 didn't seem like a lot for what you were getting. But with AMD shipping $99 quad core CPUs, and the Phenom II line being very competitive in the $130 - $200 space - is Lynnfield too expensive?
Our sources are telling us that Lynnfield isn't selling as well as expected, it's not a flop, but definitely selling under expectations. The reason? Price. Apparently the vendors (and their customers) were hoping for a sub-$200 Core i5 750. Remember that the majority of quad-core sales happen under the $200 mark. Fortunately for AMD, there aren't any cheaper quad-core Lynnfields on the roadmaps for Intel through Q3 of next year; the Core i5 750 will be the cheapest quad-core Nehalem for the foreseeable future.
Instead, Intel will compete with 32nm Clarkdale CPUs in the sub-$200 space. These are dual core parts with Hyper Threading; it remains to be seen how well they'll stack up to AMD's quad-core CPUs in that space, since it doesn't look like we'll see Lynnfield down there anytime soon.
Assuming that Clarkdale isn't overly competitive, Phenom II could dominate the ~$150 quad-core price point throughout much of 2010. The biggest threat to Phenom II appears to be the Core i5 650. We'll see how that plays out early next year.
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iwodo - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Well, it will defiantly sell well in terms of OEM market. Since they will sell the same amount of PC, and Intel will be pushing Lynfield into their throat anyway.I wont even called that Sales, it is more like tax on those OEM makers.
I think it wont sell well in terms of Retail market.
IntelUser2000 - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Ivy Bridge is a shrink of Sandy Bridge to 22nm. It's Haswell that will have FMA.iwodo - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Yes. It is Ivy Beidge ( the shrink of Sandy Bridge ) for FMA.It was supposed to be for Sandy Bridge, but some changes delay it to Ivy Bridge. So unless they have postponed it AGAIN. it should be out with Ivy Bridge.
bigboxes - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
I know the basic archetecture of Lynnfield is superior to Bloomfield, but you are not using 6gb of tri-channel memory for the i920. That is where the i920 really shines. Is there a reason that you are not testing with 6gb of ram with the 920 other than apples to apples testing that needs to be done? Just curious.the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
lynnfield has another gigantic bottleneck which is the dmi bus speed of only 2GBps, phenom 2 hypertransport speed is 41.6 GB/s which means that is 20 times faster than lynnfield when communicating with the chipset,that shows why phenom 2 is better than lynnfield. this is going to be a real problem in the next future.silverblue - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Actually, as HT 3.0 is limited to 16-bit width on AMD desktop boards, it's half that.DigitalFreak - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Next future? As opposed to the current future? I must thank you for all the laughs I get from reading your posts.TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
No offense, but you're clearly an idiot.You realize that in EVERY benchmark, the i7 860 was running at higher clock speeds than the i7 920. Sometimes by a lot, with turbo mode. Also, Anand uses inferior memory for the i7 920, to try to 'prove' the validity of the brain-damaged P55 platform.
Despite his bad attempt, the i7 920 STILL outperformed it. If you clock them at the same rate, with the same uncore, it's only ugly for the Lynnfield.
It's not superior. Well, in performance. It's got nice power characteristics, and it's cheaper to implement. But, your remark is purely idiotic.
Where do you get stuff like this from?
Etern205 - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Lynnfields are categorizes as mainstream, therefore no matter how advanced their architecture is compared to Bloomfield, it won't out perform it. Intel purposely did this and you should know this by now, but I guess you don't care as your too busy sucking your own c0ck."Your the kind of man that can be use as a blueprint to build a idiot".
bigboxes - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Sorry. I didn't mean to say anything that would warrant an "idiot" label. I have just been reading from Anand that the Lynnfield core is better than the Bloomfield. In all his testing he never uses 6gb of ram in his tests. I understand that he wants to measure the cpus on a level playing field, but when you put 6gb of pc1600 ram on an i920 those scores increase considerably. From what I understand that is something that the Lynnfield cannot achieve. Was just wondering if Anand could throw that (i920 w/6gb) into his charts. It seems that almost all Bloomfield owners are gonna be running 6gb (3x 2gb) and not 4gb. The i920 uses that extra bandwidth and it truly performs better when so equipped. I hope that makes more sense.