Conclusions

The performance of the i5 750 is rather impressive. It loses very little when compared to the other Lynnfield offerings in regard to speed and features. The closest Bloomfield competitor is the Core i7 920. The 920 has the benefit of hyper threading, and three channels of DDR3 memory, however in most real world applications the Core i5 750 is neck and neck with the 920. There is only a few applications that take advantage of hyper threading. However, with the easy overclockability of the 750, it is easily able to match, and surpass the 920. Bloomfield processors do have the ability to reach higher clock speeds rather easily as well, but this benefit it countered by the more expensive x58 chipset. A low end x58 chipset board for the Bloomfield CPUs you can expect to pay the equivalent to a high end P55 board. There is a few minor divisions between the two, but for most the small gains such a high price yields, may not be worth it.

The MSI P55-GD65 performed admirably for a midpoint motherboard. The OC genie makes the process of overclocking as simple as pressing a single button. I did tinker a bit with the board mounted clock adjustment buttons, and they appear to work to their purpose. I should note that the OC genie button is located even on the lower iterations of the MSI P55 boards, even the micro ATX version. I have heard people describing issues with the OC genie on the CD53 step down board. However the BIOS for both of these boards is rather straightforward, with enough settings and features to easily get yourself to a decent overclock if the OC genie should fail you. I prefer the OC genie to any Operating System based automatic overclocking utility. I only briefly touched on the BIOS for this board, but MSI is now as competitive and full featured in their BIOS as the similar offerings from the other large board makers Asus, and Gigabyte. Layout and configuration on motherboards has come a long way, and these days even a mid range enthusiast board avoids many of the little annoyances that used to plague system builders.

The CoolerMaster Hyper 212 plus does a very nice job cooling the i5 750. Even when overclocked and a little extra voltage is applied, full load doesn't even breach the 65C mark. The stock fan is quiet enough to not be an issue, and the included thermal grease is as comparable to any of the 'preferred' choices out there.

I've been using the system for a little while and putting it through some pretty intense workload. So far stability has been rock solid, and general application performance has been top notch.

Aside from a few little inconsistencies, it seems apparent that if you have a decent CPU, slightly overclocking what you have may yield better results that upgrading the system itself. We are in an age of gaming where the performance of the CPU isn't often the bottleneck. It is possible things may change in the next generation of PC games, but right now a decent Q6600, or a high clocked dual core processor like the E8400 is more than enough to provide a great gaming experience in current games.

There has been rumblings about a socket flaw that causes damage to the motherboard and the CPU during overclocking Lynnfield processors. It seems that because there is fewer power connections on LGA1156 CPUs, if too much voltage is applied heat damage and melting can damage a system. However, this only seems a risk to those 'extreme overclockers' out there, as a very large amount of core voltage is required to be at risk. Still it is something that deserves to be mentioned.

Installing Windows 7 went off without a hitch, and there was no need to hunt for compatible drivers in the new 64 bit operating system.

That about covers it for this article. Thanks for reading!

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