Crysis Warhead
There’s no question that these are playable frame rates even at high settings. Even a little overclocking benefits the results. Sure, these processors can game. But, can you?
x265 HD Benchmark 3.0
We all love to encode some movies. If you’re a media-phile, then the Core i7 series is for you. When overclocked, these two chips offer some even greater performance.
PCMark Vantage
Well, here we see that the extra cores and Hyper-threads do make a difference. We see that the 875K is obviously scores better due to the extra cores in gaming and productivity. But, as you saw in the game benchmarks, it doesn’t always equate in to a real world benefit for single threaded games.
Final Thoughts
It’s nice to see some unlocked processors coming from Intel again that don’t carry the Extreme Edition price tag. The $220 Core i5-655K and $190 Core i5-650 are currently about $30 different between price tags which we feel is well worth the extra cost. But, the real money is saved when buying the Core i7-875K processor.
At $350 USD, it’s easily a $150 less than its Core i7-870 sibling which still carries a $500 or more price tag. This is by far your best bang for buck if you’d like a system that will last you for years to come.
What the Core i5-655K and Core i7-875K processors offer is simplicity for the enthusiast in us all dying to get out. Everyone can be an overclocker without having to do much more than increasing one setting in the BIOS, or in the overclocking software bundled with your motherboard. Either way, you don’t have to be a BIOS guru to get some respectable performance gains.
With good pricing, guaranteed performance, and processing power for media and gaming, we foresee the K Series processors emptying off the shelves pretty quick.
Pros
- Unlocked multiplier
- Very easy to overclock
- Works with both P55 and H55 chipsets
- Core i5-655K worth the extra money
- Core i7-875K “Best Bang for Buck”
Cons
- You’ll have to install it yourself 🙂
Overall Rating: 9.0/10.0
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