Summing Upwards: Upwards to eleven Times the Performance

When nosotros put the pieces together and started writing this article, we didn't hateful to make an upgrade guide out of it. Rather, we wanted to await back at how Intel's CPUs take progressed over the years, if simply for the bibliographic value and how interesting it might be. Seldom do we feature more than a few production generations in our processor reviews equally we typically only compare products to what they're replacing and competing with.

With Intel'south new Skylake architecture arriving next week, we thought it a expert time to examine Intel'southward advances over the past decade earlier checking out their side by side major creation.

In 2006 the Core 2 Duo E6600 retailed for $316 and in its place today we take the Core i7-4790K for roughly the same price at $339. The 4790K is clocked at nigh twice the frequency, features twice as many cores, and four times equally many threads.

Actual functioning gains are more impressive.

The Cadre i7-4790K is eleven times faster in Excel 2013 and Hybrid x265, six times faster in 7-Zip, Photoshop CC, and HandBrake. When it came to gaming, the 4790K was twice as fast in BioShock Infinite and Crysis three, 7 times faster in Metro Redux, 3 times faster when testing with Hitman Absolution and just barely faster in Tomb Raider.

Although the Core two Quad Q9650 performed considerably amend than the E6600, it was still worlds slower than the i7-4790K and often establish itself outpaced by the Pentium G3220 (Haswell) and even the Celeron G1820.

The Cadre 2 processors were fine for full general usage under Windows 8.1, though it has to exist said a 4-10w SoC provides about the same experience.

With almost viii years of separation, it should exist unsurprising to discover that the newer processor is between 6 and 12 times faster -- some folks might accept even expected bigger gains. This is certainly truthful when looking at the four year gap betwixt the Core i5-760 and Core i5-4690K.

The 4690K is only 32% faster than the 760 in Excel, 25% faster in 7-Nix and just 17% on boilerplate when comparing gaming operation. That said, the 4690K enjoys a 60% operation advantage in Illustrator CC, while it'south xc% faster when testing with Photoshop CC and 111% faster with HandBrake.

Another perspective to consider betwixt the Core 2 Duo E6600 and Cadre i7-4790K is that the vi - 12x performance gain is delivered while consuming no actress power. On a similarly impressive notation, the Pentium G3220 oftentimes matched or even trounce the Core 2 Quad Q9650 while consuming almost one-half as much ability.The ii twelvemonth gap betwixt the Sandy Span and Haswell architecture shows reasonable gains at times, but for the near part the difference is minimal. For instance, the Core i5-4690K is xx% faster on boilerplate when comparison application operation and but xi% faster when comparing the encoding results (go along in heed that information technology'due south clocked a mere half-dozen% higher). In gaming tests, almost cipher separates the 2 processors.

If you enjoyed this article make certain you share it with friends and watch out for our coverage of Intel'southward Skylake CPUs next week. In the meantime bank check out some great related reads below.

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  • Intel Cadre i3 vs. Core i5 vs. Core i7: A Value and Performance Assay