Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

[intelmagic]

i5-650 is 3.20 ghs dual core.
i5-750 is 2.66 ghz quad core.

Why didn't they make the i5-750 a 3.20 quad core. Am I missing something? Are they the same speed? Why would someone buy one or the other?

[Insight Homewood]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

it is Intel marketing. Knowing that people look at a number, and figure a bigger number must be better, the two parts you are referring to are two different generations. The i5-650 is a Clarksdale dual core processor. The i5-750 however is a Lynnfield quad core part. The dual core part is a 32nanometer part and the quad core is a 45 nanometer part. Which is better for you really depends on what you use your computer for. Office applications, web surfing, email, movie watching and such are fine with a dual core part, so higher clock speed would be the better choice. If you use any program that can take advantage of two or more cores, such as Photoshop, then the quad core part, even at a lower clock speed might be better. It also depends on the operating system. Windows XP users should stick with the dual core part; Windows 7 users can use the quad core part. At this time, very few things take advantage of the extra cores. Extra cores allow a power user to keep a lot of applications open at the same time. That said, extra ram on a 64 bit OS is the better choice, irrespective of the processor being dual or quad core.
List of Intel Core i5 microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[ahlok]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

yes, depend on apps that normally you used.
most of the decent games supported multi-core,
so if you look for gaming, get the i5-750

[miahallen]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

I just wrote a buyers guide (linked in my sig) that should help you out :)

[sin0822]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

i would say if you plan on gaming and keeping it a few years id go with the quad, if you just want to use it for a year and get a sandybridge system id go with the dual. For me i wanted headroom so i bought a i7 930, nice a fast today and next year.

[blizzaga4]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

get the quad for a better future proof...

[Psycho101]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

Definitely read miahallen's guide, it's rather good.

IMO go for the Quad core, or even better if you can, consider a 1336 i7 system. I simply couldn't stretch to the extra cost so I stuck with a P55 and the 760.

Remember, at stock the 750 will crank up the speed using turbo boost which will make single core usage at least, as good as anything else on the market.

Games now are getting much more multi threaded and the hardware industry is also gearing up to adding more cores. From now on I believe that parallelism is going to be the future rather than raw clock speed. Many games such as Mafia II, Crysis (to a degree) and BBC-2 love quads. For example on my old E7400 at 3.9GHz with the same 460 I got ~38FPS average in the built in benchmark. Going to the i5 760 my FPS rocketed to ~66FPS average, which is actually a huge increase seeing as it was only the CPU and the RAM that changed.

Again, IMO and only IMO, Hyper Threading isn't fantastic compared to having the two extra physical cores. In some cases HT can be great, but never as good as more real cores. In some situations, due to how HT works, it can have a negative performance effect. This is rare however and is usually when gaming or 3D modelling using specific tasks and computational patterns. It has to do with how the CPU uses spare resorces to execute another thread and how sometimes as a result, instructions get queued rather than being executed right away, introducing minor lag.

I love my i5 Quad Core. It clocks really well, was easy to get "stable" and cost very little. It would actually have been more money to get myself a Q9550, which is bizzare!

[dsasorin]

Re: Which of the 2 processors are better - Intel i5-650 or Intel i5-750

another difference: i5 650 has a video controller embedded. i5 750 hasn't.