Power Consumption

Intel isn't really exploiting 22nm for significantly higher default or max turbo frequencies. While it does seem like you'll hit turbo frequencies more often with Ivy, most of what 22nm offers will be realized as power savings.

At idle, all cores are already power gated so there's not much more Ivy Bridge can offer. We see savings of a couple of watts at most over the 2600K but otherwise it's nothing significant. In notebooks I'd expect to see implementations of DDR3L help keep power consumption down, but at idle there's really not much that can be done.

Power Consumption - Idle

Power Consumption - Load (x264 HD 3.03 2nd Pass)

Under load however the power savings are significant. The Core i7 3770K pulls 27 fewer watts while delivering better performance than the 2600K. Again, translating this to what you can expect in notebooks I'd say that peak battery life likely won't be affected, but battery life under load will be better with Ivy.

Discrete GPU Gaming Performance Intel HD 4000 Performance: Crysis Warhead
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  • The0ne - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link

    "There's not enough of an improvement to make existing SNB owners want to upgrade, but if you're still clinging to an old Core 2 (or earlier) system, Ivy will be a great step forward."

    Basically all the laptops in the last few years for business have been bought with C2D. I think with Ivy, it's a great time to upgrade them all and see a good improvement. Same for family members too. I can't wait to try them out! Thanks for the review Anand.
  • benjaminbldp - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    maybe intel should drop the graphics all together, i don't like it, let the pro take care of it. just too much.
  • dr/owned - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    This article blows because there's no overclocking results. We're not looking for a fine tuned overclock. Just give us the rough and dirty! My money is on 5 ghz with minimal effort using an air cooler.
  • dagamer34 - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    It's a preview, not a review.
  • dr/owned - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    It seems like Intel has the tick-tocks backwards. The i7-920 is arguably the greatest cpu to come out in recent years and it was "just" a tick.
  • Wardrop - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    I'm afraid you have it backwards.

    The i7-920 is a Nehalem processor (it's a 45nm chip). It's a tock. Why is this concept so hard to grasp?
  • bigboxes - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    Look at the chart. Nehalem (i920) was a tock.
  • just4U - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    I have to disagree with you on the i920 being such a huge leap. As someone who goes thru virtually every cpu line up for AMD/Intel I'd have to say the C2D (or quad) 6x series was the biggest leap forward in the past decade. Before that it was the A64 and X2 variants (altho.. we didn't get alot of use out of those secondary cores)
  • IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    LOL, this must be the most hilarious argument I've heard in a while.

    How do you relate 30+ % graphics gain as being ALL CPU? Don't be ridiculous, and that's an understatement.
  • Silma - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link

    Are low-res testing really relevant for graphics?

    Most players play at 1920x1080 or higher.
    1368x720 or 1680x1050 does not seem relevant to me at all for most people, especially those purchasing a computer with this processor.

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