Intel Core i3 530 Clarkdale On Linux

Intel's Core i3 530 is an interesting, low to mid-range processor. Intel's Clarkdale family was just introduced earlier this month, but it will work with recent Linux distributions and should work particularly well with the distributions coming around in H1'2010 that are using the Linux 2.6.32 kernel (or newer). Found in the newer kernel is support for the integrated graphics processor and other work. We will have more comments on Intel H55 Linux compatibility in our ECS motherboard review, but again if using a recent Linux distribution there should not be any major issues.

In our Core i3 Linux benchmarks we found this processor to perform very well especially in the heavily SMP-based areas where it was able to shine and run quite well. In other areas, the Core i3 530 was running neck-and-neck with the Core 2 Duo E8400 processor that is based on Intel's Wolfdale from 2008. In some benchmarks, this older processor would come out ahead when running at its higher clocks, but this was a very close race and the Core i3 can be overclocked well too. The Core 2 Duo E8400 actually retails for around $170 USD where as the Core i3 530 is selling for about $120 USD, which makes it a much better bargain. The AMD Phenom II X3 710 did not pose much of a threat to the Core i3 530 processor except in the OpenSSL and Apache benchmarks.

Other advantages of the dual-core Core i3 530 include support for Hyper Threading, a 73 Watt TDP, SSE 4.1/4.2 support, and the integrated Intel graphics processor that we will be benchmarking shortly. Stay tuned as we draw more Clarkdale conclusions in that forthcoming Linux graphics article. If you're interested in the Core i3 530 you can find it at NewEgg for $120 or $125 right now at Amazon. Using either of those shopping links (or our other shopping links) when purchasing your PC hardware will go to support our Linux hardware operations at Phoronix and allow us to continue buying new hardware for tests like we did with this Intel Core i3 processor.