Clarkdale's Efficiency: Core i5-661 Versus Core 2, Athlon II, And Phenom II

Benchmark Results: Synthetics

Sandra shows signficantly improved computing power for the Core i5-661 at 3.33 GHz, but this doesn’t necessarily reflect real-world applications. However, have a look at the encryption benchmark results, which are much accelerated on the new Clarkdale CPU.

This is one of the most amazing results. Thanks to Intel’s six additional instructions accelerating AES encryption and decryption, the performance boost is almost 12x when compared to the Core 2 Duo E8600. Keep in mind that we did not have to modify or update the benchmark to get these results.

The encryption score is similarly high, although SHA is not supported.

The increased memory bandwidth is most likely a result of the on-package memory controller (which, in turn, isn't as effective as Lynnfield's on-die memory controller).

PCMark Vantage also shows decent performance gains for the Core i5 versus the Core 2 Duo processor at the same nominal clock speed. Keep in mind that Core i5 takes advantage of its Turbo Boost feature, which lifts the CPU to a maximum of 3.60 GHz.