In the test 15 years ago: Intel‘s Sparkönige Pentium G6950 and Core i3-530 6 comments
With the Core i3-530 and especially the Pentium G6950 (test), Intel’s two cheapest 32nm processors were tested. The Pentium not only had to do without clock and hyperthreading, but also had to cope with a smaller L3 cache and a slower memory interface.
Less computing power with the same memory
Both processors rely on two cores, with the Core i3 coming to four logical cores thanks to hyperthreading. The Pentium G6950, on the other hand, had to be satisfied with two physical without hyperthreading and accordingly two logical cores. Apart from that, the clock speed of the Pentium with 2.8 GHz was 133 MHz lower than that of the Core i3-530. Nevertheless, both processors came at a TDP of 73 watts. Another shortcoming of the Pentium was the memory clock frequency specified for a maximum of 1,066 MHz, while the Core i3 also supported 1,333 MHz.
Intel Core i3 and Pentium (Clarkdale) Family Model Code Name TAKT / MIT Turbo Kerne / Threads L3-Cache Socket TDP DDR3-SPEICHER PRIIS CORE I3 530 CLARKDALE 2.93 2.80 / – GHZ 2C / 2T 3 MB LGA1156 73 W 1.066 MHz 75 €
Apart from these larger differences, there were still some in detail. For example, the Pentium did not dominate any sse4.x command. In addition, the QPI clock of the Pentium G6950 at 2,400 MHz was lower than the 2,933 MHz of the Core i3-530. In terms of price, the Pentium G6950 with almost 75 euros in Germany was 25% below the 100 Euro Core i3-530.
With hyper-threading on all mountains
Thanks to Hyper-Threading, the Core i3-530 opened up and left the Pentium G6950 at 19%. With hyper-threading disabled, clock lowered and RAM throttled, the Core i3-530 was only two percent faster, the influence of the larger L3 cache and SSE4 remained here. In games with a Radeon HD 5870, the differences were even greater. At 800 × 600 pixels, the Core i3-530 was 42% faster and 34% faster at 1,680 × 1,050 pixels.
In terms of power efficiency and overclocking, both processors were able to shine. Under CPU load, the overall system power consumption was just under 100 or 110 watts, surprisingly good values. If you wanted to sacrifice something of that power efficiency, you can also expect very good overclocking results. In the test, the Pentium G6950 reached 4.21 GHz and the Core i3-530 4.54 GHz. Conversely, both processors could also be served very well: the Core i3-530 had to be used stable with under one volt.
Conclusion
On their own, both Intel processors were attractive: cheap, efficient, efficient, well overclocked and sufficiently fast. The Core i3-530 in particular cut a very good figure in the test. It became more critical when competition from AMD was also considered. For the same 75 euros as a Pentium G6950 cost, there was an Athlon II X4 620 with four cores and 2.6 GHz. This achieved the same performance of a Core i3-530 for less money, for which 100 euros there was almost the Athlon II X4 635 with four cores and 2.9 GHz. If you absolutely wanted to have a cheap Intel processor, you were well advised with the Core i3-530.
In the category “in the test 15 years ago”, the editorial team has taken a look at the test archives every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:
The GeForce GTX 280m in the 5.6 kg notebook. The Radeon HD 5450 was useless for gaming, but otherwise best bursts Blow-Koloss Grand Kama Crossdie Geforce GT 240 with 1024 Mbyte DDR3 Senselessemds. Alltamrazers Orochi for mobile enjoyment via BluetoothBlackberrys Bold 9700 was an aspiring smartphone Super Mario Bros. was also a cheap hitnvidias Geforce GT 240 must have been tired. CPU Air-Cooler The Radeon HD 5970 was fast and jerky Corsairs 800D was great for water cooling Apphire, the Radeon HD 5750 brought a recommendation to a recommendation on three displays Satis Radeon HD 5750, despite 115 Euro RRP 2 Silent-Compatable Top Top Radeon HD 570 5850 as an affordable DirectX 11 entry
Even more content like this and many more reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the TechAstuce forum.
Topics: Core-I Series Intel Pentium Processor Retro
Marc deciphers processors by testing their performance for gaming, content creation, and artificial intelligence.
