Customer Reviews

Intel Core i5 750 Processor 2.66 GHz 8 MB LGA1156 CPU I5-750BOX

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Incredible processor for the money. Absolutely the best bang for buck CPU on the market right now. I laughed when this thing opened Photoshop in a couple of seconds. It eats anything in its path and blitzes through games. As a test, I opened about 20 applications (including Photoshop with it's heavy memory requirements) and switched quickly between programs in order to try and trip the CPU up. While I did this, I was playing music from a playlist of several thousand songs, painting/editing an image in PS, and most importantly, running Windows XP in a virtual machine inside Windows 7. 1GB RAM was dedicated to XP, along with 64MB of graphics memory. Would you believe it, there was no lag. Awesome.

I'm using it with a Gigabyte GA-P55 UD3R board, 2 x 2GB Patriot Viper II 'Sector 5' 1600MHz RAM, and Samsung's (latest) Spinpoint F3 hard drive (model HD501HJ). OS is Windows 7 32-bit. The whole thing runs beautifully! Just a heads up -- Windows 7 32-bit will only use 3.5GB RAM. No use buying more than 4GB in a 32-bit environment, and you need to make sure you buy RAM that will run at 1.65V or less. Do your homework before buying.

Had this thing doing 4GHz on the stock cooler with just a minor bump in voltage, mainly just to see how well it overclocks and scales with voltage increases. No complaints at all. The cooler will definitely be replaced as soon as funds permit. The stock Intel cooler is abysmal. I would not recommend anything but a minor OC using it. The cooler to buy for this CPU is the Prolimatech Megahalems, which isn't cheap, but those looking for superior performance need look no further. The Megahalems is the best choice.

Dynamic overclocking using Turbo Mode is excellent. The stock multiplier for the 750 is 20x. Using a Gigabyte P55 board, the multiplier goes as high as 24x when dynamically overclocking. Power consumption at idle during light tasks such as web surfing and playing music is fantastic. According to Everest, it uses just under 7 watts at idle. I feel this is an important point considering the current state of the economy. Any saving on electricity bills is worth thinking about unless you have money to burn. My sweet spot seems to be 148 BCLK (2.94GHz). At this speed, the CPU is able to dynamically overclock up to around 3.5Ghz and then lower the multiplier down to 9x when idle, which of course lowers the frequency, which of course means lower electricity bills.

Thanks, Intel, for making a great processor at a reasonable price. An i7 system running on X58 chipset would have cost a lot more. I wasn't prepared to pay the price because I am not a fool. I am more than happy with the i5 750, it's a very impressive CPU that should serve anybody well for a good few years.

This processor is part of a ground up gaming build that I've done and upon completion this little baby rocks. It is very fast and will quickly prove itself as something incredibly difficult to bog down. I don't think that I have been able to push this processor to its limits yet and believe me I've tried. I wouldn't waste your money or time considering a faster 1156 processor unless you have *EVERY* possible bottleneck accounted for. Believe me you won't be dissapointed.

Love this I5-750. It's fast and cool. It runs under 50C under load in turbo @3.2G. Overclocked to 3.8g with stock heatsink. Convert video and play HDTV with ease.

Need to be careful with the selection of DDR3. Initially paired with A-Data 2x2G and had random blue screens. Changed to Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 and problem solved.

Stock heatsink is on the small side, but it did get the job done.

I bought this processor at another store. It was an egg-culent price. With a good board, which you can get for under $140 (Asrock Extreme P55), you can easily overclocking this CPU and get it to do 3.7GHz in turbo (using 153 BCLK frequency for me)which matches the top of the line Lynchfield processor and blows away the Clarkfield processors. Get a nice cooler (Artic Freezer Pro II). My i5 750 does not go above 62C in stress tests which is where you want it. Idles at 25-31C. Don't let memory bottleneck you. Get some 1600mHz DDR3 dual channel (for the price can not beat G-Skill 4G 1600). Tweak it in Bios to get from 1333 to around 1600. I get 7.7 memory in Windows 7 experience index. Your biggest bottle neck will be the hard drive. If you don't want to go Raid 0 then get a 10,000 RPM but I got a fast 7,200 HD (WD 640 Caviar Black gets 101mB/s versus 55mB/s of others).

Note that this upgrade path may be a dead end since Intel is not planning on making any faster chips for this socket. I don't care. In a few years the Intel sandy bridge tock chip design is coming up and then all current processors will be old news.

This CPU will do everything you want fast and efficient. It is a pleasure to start up my computer and work with such a responsive chip.

Ordered on the night of feb 4th, shipped on the night of feb 5th, delivered to Miami on the 9th with Amazon free Super Saver Shipping. I got it in Trinidad 2 days later. I ordered it the same time with other parts for the computer but they all shipped the day after. The i5 came alone with a weight of 1.20lbs.

I run Windows 7 64 bit and it never chokes with any apps or games and I have not overclocked it yet. If you want a serious gaming system do not spend more on the CPU than this, put the money towards a better graphics card or better SSD. The turbo boost works flawlessly to throttle the CPU instantaneously as necessary. Using the stock cooler I get around 40 degrees celcius when on the net or office apps and depending on how aggressively I set the fan speeds at most it reaches 60 degrees celcius during the day while gaming NFS Shift, Modern Warfare 2, World at War. The CPU never chokes on HD resolutions, AA 2x or 4x on for gaming. The bottle neck for me I think is the GPU and hard drive. Videos run smoothly, there are no freezes or crashes. If I decide to overclock then I will upgrade the stock cooler, the intel stock one is more than adequate for now. It's been a few weeks now with no problems and I am very happy with the build. The pc is not in an air conditioned room so with a/c air you can expect to get slightly lower temps. The temp in the room probably reaches around 30 degrees at peak.

This CPU is amazing value for money, I predict this PC will last me well into the future, and when games get even more intense I can go xfire and get a SSD.


System specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Intel Core i5 750 Processor 2.66 GHz 8 MB LGA1156 CPU I5-750BOX (quad core, turbo boost)
Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 XMS3 4 GB PC3-12800 Core i5 Memory Kit (1600mhz)
XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 PCIE Graphics Card HD577AZNFC (1gb, DX 11)
Gigabyte Intel Core i7/ Core i5/ Core i3/ LGA 1156/ Intel H57/ 4DDR3-2200+/ATI CrossFireX/ HDMI/ USB3.0/ Raid Micro ATX Motherboard GA-H57M-USB3(usb3, 7.1 audio, xfire, raid)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS
OCZ OCZ600MXSP ModXStream Pro 600 Watt Power Supply (ATX12v 2.2, modular cables, 80+)
Thermaltake VI1000NWS M9 case (2 x 120mm fan, toolless)
IDE dvd burner
Logitech MX 518 High Performance Optical Gaming Mouse (Metal)
Dell S2209w 22" LCD (5ms, 1080p, DVI-D)
Logitech x530 speakers (5.1, 70w rms)
MS Keyboard
Sony MDR-XD200 headphones
500VA UPS

Windows Experience Index Ratings (max is 7.9):
Processor: 7.3
Memory: 7.7
Graphics: 7.4
Gaming graphics: 7.4
Primary disk: 5.9

If you are reading this you know the Core i5 and Core i7 are the best CPUs currently made (as of March 2010). I was split between the Core i5-750 and the Core i7-960. It comes down to Hyperthreading, which the Core i5-750 does not have. To me, it's not worth the $80 price difference as the performance improvement is inconsistent and amounts to nothing for gaming.

The i5-750 overclocks great. With no effort and only a cooler-master CPU cooler I'm up to 3.7 Ghz. This is pretty mild overclock as this CPU has been know to hit 4.0-4.1 on air. You just can't beat this processor for the price.

Needless to say, my new system is very fast. I went with the following Combo for value and performance. Not cheap, but can run any game I have maxed out and I won't need to replace anything for about 3-years.

Gigabyte P55M-UD2
Core i5-750
ATI Radeon 5850 Graphics card
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB drive
Sony Optiwrite DVD burner
Corsair XMS3 4Gb RAM
Corsair TX650 power supply
Cooler Master CPU cooler
Cooler Master Case

Let me just get this out of the way from the beginning. I'm a gamer and for me I'm always looking at upgrades that will improve my gaming performance the most. Never, ever have I seen such huge improvements in my gaming framerates as when I decided to get a new cpu, motherboard, and ram combo. I had purchased a Radeon 5970, which I have also reviewed on here if your interested in reading that, hoping that would be the biggest improvement to my gaming. It turns at that although it was good, it was being held WAY back due to my last-gen setup. I'll post the old and new ones now.

Old

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.4ghz
4GB DDR2-800 memory
Radeon 5970

New

Intel Core i5 750 OC @ 4.0ghz
4GB DDR3-2000 memory
Radeon 5970

This processor is insane. Even at the stock cpu settings my framerates were better than with the Q9400. I then OC'd it to 4.0ghz using Corsair's H50 water cooler to keep it around 34c at idle. During normal gaming use my temps stay in the 36-46c range most of the time. I rarely see the temps exceed 52c max while gaming. Only during an Intel Burn Test running all four cores at 100% load did I see temps hit 68c. I even have all my fans on the lowest settings. I am using 1.34vcore and 1.23v vtt right now as well, which is probably higher than it needs to be. I could lower these temps even more by reducing the voltage, so I may try that later on.

My gaming framerates have doubled now just by upgrading from a Q9400 and DDR2-800 memory to this i5 750 and DDR3-2000 memory. This is such a great processor and one I highly recommend over anything else right now. Check out benchmarks all over the net and you will see that when this processor is OC'd to match the i7's, it can hang with those and even beat them out in some games for framerates.

This is the BEST processor for the money right now. It flat out performs with 4 complete cores (quad core). If your motherboard comes with a utility to bump up the clock speed to 2.8 GHz, it will perform within a hair of the i7-860 at $100 less cost. If you do not want to bump it, you will still never notice the difference from an i7-860 unless you use a sensitive CPU benchmark. Win 7 performance Index gives it the same CPU score as the i7-860 when both are at stock speed - it's that close. Highly recommended.

Its amazing the value for money you get with this processor. I am stepping up from the Core 2 8400 and this thing blows it away. I was torn between this and the i7 860. Believe me, unless you are into serious media production..... you won't miss the hyperthreading. Save the 80+ Bucks and put it towards a SSD drive or a better graphics card.

For a non-gamer, this is huge leap up from an old P4. Combined with a Gigabyte mobo and a couple of WD drives, 4G of DDR3 and an EVGA GeForce 9800 this does a respectable job on WinXP and standard office suites. It's loafing along most of the time and opens apps before the mouse button is released. A very good value even at the relatively high price.