Intel's Clarkdale processors arrive at Newegg


by Cyril Kowaliski — 10:49 AM on January 7, 2010

Intel's new 32-nm desktop processors didn't hit e-tail listings immediately after Monday's launch, but they're finally there, with Newegg now stocking the entire line of Clarkdale-based Core i3 and Core i5 offerings. While the e-tailer offers free shipping on all those CPUs, its prices are also a wee bit higher than those in Intel's official price list:

Model Base core speed Peak Turbo speed Intel price Newegg price
Core i3-530 2.93 GHz - $113 $124.99
Core i3-540 3.06 GHz - $133 $144.99
Core i5-650 3.20 GHz 3.46 GHz $176 $194.99
Core i5-660 3.33 GHz 3.60 GHz $196 $207.99
Core i5-661 3.33 GHz 3.60 GHz $196 $209.99
Core i5-670 3.46 GHz 3.73 GHz $284 $299.99

As a reminder, all Core i3 and i5 processors have two cores, four threads, and 4MB of L3 cache. All except for the i5-661 also have 733MHz GPU clock speeds and 73W power envelopes (the i5-661 clocks its GPU at 900MHz and has a higher, 87W TDP).

Newegg's current prices position the entire Clarkdale lineup above AMD's quad-core Athlon II X4 processors, which sell for $99 and $113. As we saw in our testing, the $113 Athlon II X4 630 holds its own in multi-threaded applications like video encoding, 3D rendering, and some games, although it's not quite as power-efficient as even high-end Clarkdales.

Real-world pricing also seems to place four of the six Clarkdale newcomers in Lynnfield territory, where they're not all that attractive. We said in our review that we'd pick the $200 Core i5-750 over the i5-661 ten times out of ten, since both processors have similar bulk prices, and the i5-750's four Lynnfield cores are capable of delivering much higher performance. Well, it turns out Newegg charges $10 more for the i5-661 and puts the slower Core i5-650 within $5 of Core i5-750.

   
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