Intel Westmere 32nm Launch & Clarkdale Core i5-661 CPU Review

System Benchmarks: SuperPI 32M / Cinebench R10

SuperPi Mod v1.5

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi via the HyperPi 0.99b interface. This is therefore a single-thread workload.


Do we have a new challenger to the stock clock SPi 32M crown? Almost, but not quite. Both the i5-661 and i7-870 Turbo Boost up to 3.59Ghz during this workload, but the Clarkdale chip is hurt by its very high latency and lesser memory bandwidth. Despite these limitations, you can expect to see Clarkdale chips set new SuperPI 32M world records in the coming weeks due to the very high overclocking potential of the 32nm Westmere core.

Cinebench R10

Cinebench R10 64-bit
Test1: Single CPU Image Render
Test2: Multi CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders


The Cinebench results are as expected, and it partly comes down to Turbo Boost. In the single-threaded test, the i5-661 and i7-870 are once again neck-and-neck because they can run up to 3.6Ghz during this workload. On the other hand, the Clarkdale chip does fall a bit behind the true quad-core processors in the multi-threaded benchmark. Having said that, it still manages to outperform the venerable Q6600, and by an a solid 15%. Not too shabby for a dual-core chip with a little Hyper-Threading tacked on. The $196 i5-661 can't touch the identically-priced i5-750 in the multi-threading performance though, which doesn't necessarily bode when we start looking for the best Bang for the Buck.