Intel Core i5-760 review

The Intel Core i5-750 has long been our favourite chip in Intel’s Core range. It’s always been a bit strange, though. While the rest of the Core i5 line are dual-core chips with Hyper Threading to create an additional two virtual cores, the i5-750 was a true quad-core model, more like the new Core i7 range.

We rather assumed that because of this Intel would phase the Core i5-7xx series out completely. Fortunately, we were wrong and the Core i5-760 has been released. Like its predecessor, this is a true quad-core processor.

As its name suggests, the i5-760 is a minor update to the i5-750. In fact, the only difference between the two is that the i5-760 runs at a clock speed of 2.8GHz, rather than the 2.66GHz of the i5-750. Otherwise, it’s business as usual. Both chips use a 45nm process, have 8MB of L3 cache, and 256MB of L2 and 64KB of L1 cache per core.

As this chip uses the slightly older Lynnfield core, rather than the newer Clarkdale core there’s one feature missing: on-board graphics. No on-board graphics means that you have to buy a graphics card to use with this processor. That’s not necessarily too bad a hardship, though, as you can buy the ATI Radeon HD 5450 for just over £30 now. Besides, most people buying a really fast processor will want a proper graphics card.

Performance is something you get in spades with this chip. Thanks to Turbo Boost, the processor will automatically overclock itself to give you a needed push when the chip’s under high load. Intel claims a maximum speed of 3.46GHz (achieved by increasing the multiplier to x26) The amount of Turbo Boost depends on how many cores are being used, with the biggest benefit coming from single-threaded applications using just one core.

We were dead impressed with the chip in our benchmarks. In our single-threaded photo editing test the chip got a score of 152, while the multi-threaded video-editing test it managed 142. With an overall score of 143, this is one fast processor that will cope with any job.

Besides, if you want even more performance this is a chip that overclocks very well. In fact, we’ve seen PCs supplied by manufacturers that have had this processor overclocked to 4GHz. These computers produced incredible scores in our benchmarks.

It’s fair to say that as the original Core i5-750 scored 136 overall in our benchmarks, the Core i5-760 isn’t really that much faster. The key to its success, though, is that it costs the same amount of money. All-in-all, the Core i5-760 is the best value processor you can buy and perfect for anyone that wants raw power in their PC. It’s the processor we’d buy and wins a Best Buy award.