PCMark Vantage simulates the use of real-world applications and gives scores for the following categories:

• PCMark
• Memories
• TV and Movies
• Gaming
• Music
• Communications
• Productivity
• HDD

For a detailed description of each one of these tests, please download and read the PCMark Vantage Reviewer’s Guide.

You can see the results for each category below. We are not going to compare the results for the Memories and HDD suites.

Core i5-750 achieved an overall PCMark score 4.85% higher than Core i7-920 (which runs at the same clock rate), 34.25% higher than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 36.08% higher than Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-870 achieved a score similar to Core i7-965, being 4.40% higher than Core 2 Extreme QX 9770, 7.86% higher than Core i5-750, 13.09% higher than Core i7-920, 44.81% higher than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 46.78% higher than Core 2 Quad Q6600.

On the TV and Movies benchmark Core i5-750 achieved a performance 23.77% higher than Core 2 Quad Q6600 and 45.81% higher than Core 2 Duo E8400. Core i7-920, which runs at the same clock rate, was 7.42% faster. Core i7-870 achieved the same performance level as Core i7-920, being 5.73% faster than Core 2 Extreme QX 9770, 7.34% faster than Core i5-750, 32.85% faster than Core 2 Quad Q6600 and 56.50% faster than Core 2 Duo E8400.

On the Gaming set Core i5-750 achieve the same performance level as Core i7-920 and was 32.74% faster than Core 2 Extreme QX 9770, 57.32% faster than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 68.32% faster than Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-870 was 5.14% faster than Core i7-920, 7.19% faster than Core i5-750, 42.29% faster than Core 2 Extreme QX 9770, 68.63% faster than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 80.42% faster than Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-965 was 6.14% faster than Core i7-870.

On the Music benchmark Core i5-750 achieved the same performance level as Core i7-920, achieving a performance 9.17% higher than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 10.78% higher than Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-870 achieved a score 3.40% higher than Core i5-750, 4.83% higher than Core i7-920, 12.89% higher than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 14.55% higher than Core 2 Quad Q6600.  Core i7-965 achieved a score 3.05% higher than Core i7-870 and Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 achieved a performance 16.27% higher than Core i7-870.

On the Communications tests Core i5-750 achieved a performance level 7.52% higher than the one achieved by Core i7-920, 20.06% higher than the one achieved by Core 2 Duo E8400 and 30.18% higher than the one achieved by Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-870 achieved a performance 7.38% higher than Core i5-750, a similar performance to Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 but a performance a little bit lower (3.95%) than Core i7-965.

And finally on the Productivity benchmark Core i5-750 achieved a performance 5.54% better than Core i7-920, 19.50% better than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 20.42% better than Core 2 Quad Q6600. Core i7-870 achieved a performance similar to Core 2 Extreme QX 9770, which was 4.53% higher than the one achieved by Core i7-965, 6.06% higher than the one achieved by Core i5-750, 11.93% higher than the one achieved by Core i7-920, 26.74% higher than the one achieved by Core 2 Duo E8400 and 27.71% higher than the one achieved by Core 2 Quad Q6600.