Intel Core i3-530 'Clarkdale' LGA1156 CPU Reviews

• PC Perspective:
  
  

  "You will be making a sacrifice for other applications though including stalwarts like video encoding and media utilities and if you think those actions are going to make up a significant portion of your computing then you still might want to look at the Core i5-750 or the Core i7-860 Lynnfield processor that is a true quad-core CPU with HyperThreading support for up to 8 concurrent threads. But, if you are comfortable with the idea, you could more than likely hit a 3.8-4.0 GHz clock rate on this CPU without a problem and negate much of that performance deficit without increasing your budget.
  
  Overall I have to say that I was much more impressed with the Core i3-530 processor than I expected to be especially considering the rather poor outlook it appears to have when looking at just the raw benchmark scores. If you have a budget rig in mind, the Core i3-530 might make a terrific starting point."

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• Techgage:
  
  

  "At $125, the i3-530 is a great value, but as we saw through our results pages, it's hard to ignore the fact that AMD has many offerings well under this price-point that compete extremely well to Intel's chip. There are some cases where a chip at about $20 less overtakes it, thanks to their quad-core nature. Where Intel really has the benefit is with applications that can take advantage of HyperThreading, and also heavily math-related scenarios. Not to mention ray tracing, although that seems like kind of a moot point for a model at this price.
  
  For those who don't mind overclocking, though, the i3-530 can prove to be an absolute bargain. As seen on the previous page, we pushed the lowly chip past 4.0GHz, and for $125, that's hard to not get excited over. We saw some real gains in our comparisons from stock to overclock, and in its overclocked state, it even performs well against the quad-core Core i5-750."

  
  Click here to read the full review.