The Ivy Bridge Preview: Core i7 3770K Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 6, 2012 8:16 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i7
- Ivy Bridge
The State of Ivy Bridge Silicon
Intel finally delivered production quality Ivy Bridge silicon to its partners last month. The launch is still scheduled for this Spring, however there has been a delay of approximately three weeks. Remember what I said earlier about the risks associated with doing too much on the architecture side while shifting to a new process node.
We were able to spend some time with the new high-end Ivy Bridge desktop SKU: Intel's Core i7 3770K. What follows is a preview of its performance. Keep in mind that this is a preview using early drivers and an early Z77 motherboard. The numbers here could change. This preview was not supported or sanctioned by Intel in any way.
The Test
To keep the preview length manageable we're presenting a subset of our results here. For all benchmark results and even more comparisons be sure to use our performance comparison tool: Bench.
| Motherboard: |
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (Intel Z68) ASUS Crosshair V Formula (AMD 990FX) Intel DX79SI (Intel X79) Intel Z77 Chipset Based Motherboard |
| Hard Disk: |
Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) Crucial RealSSD C300 OCZ Agility 3 (240GB) |
| Memory: | 4 x 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 9-9-9-20 |
| Video Card: |
ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) AMD Processor Graphics Intel Processor Graphics |
| Video Drivers: | AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows 7 x64 |
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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.