Core i5-661 CPU Review

Conclusions

The new Core i5-661 is certainly an interesting CPU. It beats Phenom II X4 965 with AMD 785G in almost all tests we performed. However on applications capable of using four CPUs, the CPU from AMD was faster: file compression with WinRAR, DivX encoding and 3D rendering with Cinebench. In some scenarios it even beats Core i5-750 due to its higher clock rate. We didn’t, however, evaluate video quality for 2D video playback, so we have no opinion on that.

Its integrated video performs satisfactorily for a user looking for a computer with integrated video and that knows the limitations of this kind of system. We could run older games relatively well with image quality settings disabled, performing better than AMD 785G. But some newer games won’t even run, as it happened with Fallout 3.

If you run games that don’t take advantage of four CPU cores (most of them) you can buy Core i5-660 or Core i5-661 to run with a discrete mainstream video card: they cost the same as Core i5-750 but because of their higher clock rate (3.33 GHz vs. 2.66 GHz) they perform better. With high-end video cards the scenario is a little bit different, as usually with them the CPU does not impact a lot on gaming performance.

The only real drawback we see with Core i5-661 is its price for the user looking for an integrated-video solution. At USD 200 range it will hardly be in the list of the kind of people that usually look for a CPU for a system with integrated video (the Intel DH55TC motherboard alone will cost another USD 100), but it can be an interesting option if you want a computer with a strong mainstream CPU and it is not into games or plan to install a real video card in the future and won’t be needing a real quad-core CPU. If, however, you mostly run applications like video editing and 3D rendering, then Core i5-750 with a discrete video card is a better option, though the system will be more expensive, since it will require you to buy a video card.