Overclocking Intel's Core i3 530

Performance Analysis and Conclusion

Image editing and video encoding sees the overclocked, 4GHz Intel Core i3 and i5 CPUs do very well and top the table. The i5-750 is still king of the hill, though, especially in video encoding, thanks to its four physical cores, but the Core i3-530 is not that far off the pace. It's faster than an overclocked Phenom II X4 965 BE at 4GHz, and the respectively cheaper AMD CPUs too, although in multi-tasking the AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE does yield a slightly better result, and even the stock clocked i5-750 is faster than the 4GHz i3-530.

In all cases though the i3-530 is faster than the older Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 3.7GHz and the E8400 at 4.25GHz - the combination of HyperThreading and the more recent Nehalem-derived architecture win out. The downside is that versus the E8400 at least, our recorded power consumption is slightly higher.

When it comes to massively parallel work like Cinebench and Prime calculations though, the real quad cores turn out better - even the Athlon II X4 630 when overclocked. This highly threaded workflow is quite specialist though - in general multitasking - which many more people do day in, day out - the i3-530 is considerably better than much of the competition.

As for gaming, at stock speeds the i3-530 doesn't make much of dent versus the competition in Crysis and X3, however overclocked it's considerably better and scores very highly. The i5-750 yields the highest result still - and even at stock speeds commands a fast average FPS in Crysis even if the minimum is quite low. Compared to old favourites, the i3-530 is faster than the E8400 at 4.25GHz and Q6600 at 3.7GHz in both games, it also skirts around the performance of the more expensive Phenom II X4 965 BE too.


In all we can see the i3-530 is extremely capable for a £95 CPU, with plenty of overclocking overhead. It's consistently faster than the Athlon alternative at the same price, and last generation of Core 2 products, although the gap varies depending on the test. It keeps up with the more expensive Core i5-661 as well, which is unsurprisingly considering the only difference is TurboBoost and we're overwhelming that factor by an order of magnitude anyway.

If you're buying a P55 board then go get the i5-750 for £150 if you can afford it because it's always faster - sometimes considerably so: it's still the new Q6600. Also remember the i3s don't fend well in P55 boards, so if the budget doesn't allow the i5-750 though, grab a capable H55 board and i3-530: this is our recommended budget CPU right now and it's great fun to overclock, too.