Intel i5 760 Review

SiSoft Sandra

Processor Arithmetic

Now here is something different. The Processor Arithmetic of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark suite uses what are called Dhrystone and Whetstone tests on the CPU. Dhrystone has been with us for over 25 years and measures Integer calculations of a CPU, whilst Whetstone is older than I am and measures Floating-Point calculations.

The extra threads available on the i7-870 help it to edge out even the overclocked i5-760 in the Whetstone test. Once we move to the Dhrystone test the i5-760 just wins out both in overclocked and stock form. Although clearly the Dhrystone test loves CPU cycles more than anything as once the overclocked i5-760 is ignored the other three CPUs are neck and neck.

Moving to the Processor Multimedia test which uses the CPU to generate a Mandelbrot fractal (a very intensive task) we see normal service resumed.

wPrime 95

Our final bunch of mathematical benchmarks is wPrime which really pushes the processor and memory to its knees in a quest to perform a set number of calculations as possible as fast as possible.

Because the benchmark is considered successful the shorter amount of time it takes to complete, similar to rendering, the graph is an inverse of our others, but the results remain the same. The incredible performance available from the i5-760 is sufficient to see it overcome the extra performance of its hyper-threaded big brother.