Intel Core i5 655K: Overclocking Made Easy… And Affordable!

Test Results

After spending some time trying to push it way beyond its original specification, it’s now time to see if overclocking the Core i5 655K is well worth the effort… and money.

• Application Performance

  SYSmark 2007

  

  The Core i5 655K’s final preview rating is quite satisfactory. This little unlocked wonder has more than enough muscle to run most of your daily applications smoothly, be it video editing, word processing, or 3D rendering. We also noted a slight performance difference between the two platforms: on P55-based motherboard (with add-on graphics card) and on H55-based motherboard (utilizing the on-chip graphics).

  WinZip 14

  

  Its new AES-NI instruction set gives the Core i5 655K an extra edge over the competitio, in our AES-256 bit compression test. The encrypted compression process lasted only a few seconds longer, compared to the ordinary, non-encrypted method. There is also a small performance difference between the P55 and H55-based platforms.

  MediaShow Espresso

  

  This video encoding application takes serious advantage from multi-threaded processors. With 4 logical threads (2 physical cores plus Hyper Threading), the Core i5 655K is slower compared to the hexa-core Phenom II X6. Overclocking improved the performance a bit. Still, virtual threads cannot compete with real, physical cores.