System Setup

Intel Core i5-750
Intel Core i5-661
Gigabyte P55-UD4P

Intel Core i5-661
Intel DH55TC (H55 Motherboard)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400
ASUS P5E3 Premium

4GB (2x2GB) OCZ Platinum @ DDR3-1333 Speeds

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
ForceWare 195.62

500GB Western Digital Caviar SE16

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Benchmarks

Resident Evil 5
Crysis
Far Cry 2
3DMark Vantage
Cinebench 10
WinRAR 3.9
LAME MT
DivX 7
VirtualDub 1.9.6

Notes

We’re going all-Intel for today’s CPU article.

Picking out an equivalent AMD processor is a tough call. Price-wise, the Core i5-661’s closest competitor is the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. At the same time though we have a hard time seeing the 661 being shopped against the Phenom II 965. The two CPUs are completely different animals from a pure features perspective. Instead its most natural competitor would be a dual-core CPU like the Athlon II X2 250, which is nowhere near the Core i5-661 in price. Rather than make a call on this decision today, we’re going to defer until AMD’s next-gen DX11 IGP is ready later this year.

You’re probably more interested in seeing how the Core i5-661 compares to Intel’s Core 2 Duo E8500 “Wolfdale” core anyway. For clock-for-clock comparison’s sake, we also included an E8600. This has been the world’s fastest dual-core CPU for a little over a year now. Does the i5-661 have what it takes to dethrone it?