Core i7-870: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Core i7-870
2009
4 cores / 8 threads, 95 Watt
1.98

Core i7-870 provides poor benchmark performance at 1.98% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.

Summary

Intel started Core i7-870 sales 8 September 2009 at a recommended price of $305. This is a Lynnfield architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, and is based on 45 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3600 MHz and a locked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1156,LGA1156 processor with a TDP of 95 Watt. It supports DDR3 memory.

Primary details

Core i7-870 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking1942
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.24
Market segmentDesktop processor
Power efficiency1.97of 100.00 (Ryzen Z1 Extreme)
Architecture codenameLynnfield (2009−2010)
Release date8 September 2009 (15 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$305of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores4 (Quad-Core)
Threads8
Base clock speed2.93 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.6 GHzof 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS)
Bus rate2.5 GT/s
L1 cache64 KB (per core)of 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache256 KB (per core)
L3 cache8 MB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography45 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size296 mm2
Maximum core temperature73 °Cof 110 °C (Atom x7-E3950)
Number of transistors774 millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility-

Compatibility

Information on Core i7-870 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA1156,LGA1156
Power consumption (TDP)95 Wattof 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i7-870. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.2
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Turbo Boost Technology1.0
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Demand Based Switching-
PAE36 Bit

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT+
EDB+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i7-870's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR3
Maximum memory size16 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels2of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth21 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Core i7-870.

Integrated graphics cardN/A

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version2.0of 5.0 (Core i9-12900K)
PCI Express lanes16of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i7-870. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i7-870 1.98

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

i7-870 3141

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

i7-870 475

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

i7-870 1554

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

i7-870 4007

3DMark06 CPU

3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.

i7-870 5881

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 11.5 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R11.5 which uses all the processor threads. A maximum of 64 threads is supported in this version.

i7-870 5

Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.

i7-870 497

Cinebench 15 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R15 (standing for Release 15) is a benchmark made by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version (sometimes called Single-Thread) only uses a single processor thread to render a room full of reflective spheres and light sources.

i7-870 100

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R11.5 is an old benchmark by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version loads a single thread with ray tracing to render a glossy room full of crystal spheres and light sources.

i7-870 1.19

TrueCrypt AES

TrueCrypt is a discontinued piece of software that was widely used for on-the-fly-encryption of disk partitions, now superseded by VeraCrypt. It contains several embedded performance tests, one of them being TrueCrypt AES, which measures data encryption speed using AES algorithm. Result is encryption speed in gigabytes per second.

i7-870 0.5

WinRAR 4.0

WinRAR 4.0 is an outdated version of a popular file archiver. It contains an internal speed test, using 'Best' setting of RAR compression on large chunks of randomly generated data. Its results are measured in kilobytes per second.

i7-870 3923

x264 encoding pass 2

x264 Pass 2 is a slower variant of x264 video compression that produces a variable bit rate output file, which results in better quality since the higher bit rate is used when it is needed more. Benchmark result is still measured in frames per second.  

i7-870 29

x264 encoding pass 1

x264 version 4.0 is a video encoding benchmark uses MPEG 4 x264 compression method to compress a sample HD (720p) video. Pass 1 is a faster variant that produces a constant bit rate output file. Its result is measured in frames per second, which means how many frames of the source video file were encoded per second.  

i7-870 121

3DMark Fire Strike Physics

i7-870 4590

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Core i7-870's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop CPUs.


FX-4320 100
Core i7-870 100
A8-7650K 99.49

AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i7-870 is FX-4320, which is nearly equal in speed and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i7-870:

A10-6800K 101.52
PRO A12-9800E 101.01
FX-4320 100
Core i7-870 100
A8-7650K 99.49
A10-6700 98.48
A10-6790K 97.98

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i7-870, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i7-870 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 7037 configurations using Core i7-870 in our database.

All comparisons with Core i7-870

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


4 1122 votes

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Questions & comments

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