Is This Even Fair? Budget Ivy Bridge Takes On Core 2 Duo And Quad

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Reader requests affect much of the work we do, and we constantly receive email asking for this one: compare Intel's older Wolfdale- and Yorkfield-based designs against today's budget-friendly Ivy Bridge-based processors. Well, you asked, and we deliver.

Test System Configuration And Benchmarks

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System Test Configurations
LGA 1155 Platform
CPU Intel Celeron G1610 (Ivy Bridge), 22 nm, 2.6 GHz, 2 MB Shared L3
Row 2 - Cell 0 Intel Pentium G2020 (Ivy Bridge), 22 nm, 2.9 GHz, 3 MB Shared L3
Row 3 - Cell 0 Intel Core i3-3225 (Ivy Bridge), 22 nm, 3.3 GHz, 3 MB Shared L3, Hyper-Threading technology
Row 4 - Cell 0 Intel Core i5-3570K (Ivy Bridge), 22 nm, 3.4 GHz (3.8 GHz maximum Turbo Boost), 6 MB Shared L3
CPU Cooler Intel Boxed Cooler
Motherboard Intel DZ77GA-70K, Intel Z77 Express, BIOS 0049  (07-13-2012)
RAM 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Crucial PC3-12800 kit Celeron / Pentium: DDR3-1333, CL 8-8-8-24 at 1.5 V Core i3 / Core i5: DDR3-1600, CL 8-8-8-24 at 1.5 V
LGA 775 Platform
Row 9 - Cell 0 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (Wolfdale), 45 nm, 3.0 GHz, 1,333 MT/s FSB, 6 MB L2 Cache Overclocked @ 4.0 GHz (445 x 9), 1,780 MT/s FSB, 1.272 V Idle/ 1.240 V Load Overclocked @ 4.5 GHz (500 x 9), 2,000 MT/s FSB, 1.416 V Idle, 1.384 V Load
Row 10 - Cell 0 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (Yorkfield), 45 nm, 2.83 GHz, 1,333 MT/s, 12 MB L2 Cache Overclocked @ 3.4 GHz (400 x 8.5), 1,600 MT/s, 1.240 V Idle/ 1.200 V Load Overclocked @ 3.7 GHz (435 x 8.5), 1,740 MT/s, 1.328 V Idle, 1.240 V Load
CPU Cooler Xigmatek HDT-S1283 120 mm air cooler
Motherboard Asus Rampage Formula, Intel X48 Express, BIOS 0902 (04-28-09)
RAM 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) Corsair PC2-8500 kit DDR2-1066, 5-5-5-15 at 2.1 V DDR2-890 & DDR2-1000 for E8400 Overclocking DDR2-1066 & DDR2-1045 tRD 07 for Q9550 Overclocking
Common
Graphics Sapphire Radeon HD 7970, 950 MHz GPU, GDDR5-5700
System Drive Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB, SATA 6Gb/s SSD
Power Corsair Professional Series HX1050, 1050 W, 80 PLUS Silver
Software and Drivers
Operating System Windows 8 Professional x64
Graphics Driver AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 7
Platform Driver Intel 7-series Inf v. 9.3.1026
305 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ASHISH65
    Wow! this is the review i am waiting from long time.Really good one for budget gamers.
    Reply
  • amoralman
    God dammit! Now I feel like I need to change my C2D E8400. >:(
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    Now this is cool stuff.

    Also, amoralman, did you read this? It's basically assuring you that your C2D is still awesome as a budget processor.
    Reply
  • Steelwing
    Very nice review! I've got a C2D E6600 (2.4 GHz) and had been considering the Core i5-3570K (or possibly wait for a Haswell i5) and was wondering about the performance differences. My CPU is still good for a lot of apps, but I can definitely see a reason to upgrade.
    Reply
  • AMD Radeon
    pentium dual core G2020 is the minimum i can recommend to budget gamers. i often listed it in sub 450 gaming PC
    Reply
  • lpedraja2002
    Excellent article, I'm glad I have a more accurate idea on where I stand based on CPU performance, I'm still using my trusty Q6600, G0 @ 3.2ghz. Its good that Tom's still hasn't forgotten that a lot of enthusiast still are rocking Core 2 architecture lol. I think I can manage until Intel releases their next revolutionary CPU.
    Reply
  • assasin32
    I been wanting to see one of these for a long time but never thought I get to see it. I just wish they had the good ol e2160, and q6600 thrown into the mix. I have the e2180 OC to 3ghz. It's still chugging along surprisingly enough, I just realized how old the thing was last night after thinking about how long I've had this build and looking up when the main components were produced. Safe to say I got my use out of that $70 cpu, did a 50% OC to it :) and it still had room to go but I wanted to keep the voltage very low.
    Reply
  • jrharbort
    I've always been curious about how well my own Core 2 Duo P8800 (45nm & 2.66GHz) would stand up against modern ivy bridge offerings. And even though I'm talking about he mobile space, I'm guessing the gains would be comparable to those seen by their desktop counterparts. Each day I'm reminded more and more that I seriously need to move on to a newer system, especially since I work with a lot of media production software. Thanks for the article, it provided some interesting and useful insight.
    Reply
  • smeezekitty
    Kind of interesting that the old Core 2s beat the I5 in tombrader with TressFX on.
    Also holy crap on 1.45 vcore on the C2D
    Reply
  • Proximon
    I would not have predicted this. Not to this extent. I hope we can make these broader comparisons across years more frequently after this. I predict this will be a very popular article.
    Reply