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 |
195 Comments
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taltamir - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Rarson is correct.He isn't suggesting no IGP at all. He is saying put a good IGP on the lower end.
While there ARE people who need a powerful CPU and will not get a video card because they don't play games, those people do not in any way benefit from having a higher end IGP.
High end gamers = discreete GPU + Powerful CPU
Budget gamers = IGP + mid-low range CPU
Non gamers with money = High end CPU + IGP (underused)
Non gamers on a budget = Mid-low range CPU + IGP (underused)
The only people who need a more powerful GPU are the budget gamers and thus it makes sense on the lower end CPUs to have a more powerful IGP.
Urillusion17 - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Great article but.... where are the temps??? The few benches I have seen don't mention overclocking, and if they do, they do not mention temps. I am hearing this chip can boil water! I would think that would be as important as anything else...DrWattsOn - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link
+1 (very much in agreement)boogerlad - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
is it possible to fully load the igp with an opencl application, and not affect the cpu performance at all? From what I've read, it appears the igp shares the cache with the cpu, so will that affect performance?rocker123 - Monday, March 19, 2012 - link
Generational performance improvements on the CPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range. As you've just seen, Ivy Bridge offers a 7 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge - making it a bonafide tick from a CPU perspectiveShould be :Generational performance improvements on the GPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range
rocker123 - Monday, March 19, 2012 - link
Generational performance improvements on the CPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range. As you've just seen, Ivy Bridge offers a 7 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge - making it a bonafide tick from a CPU perspectiveShould be :Generational performance improvements on the GPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range
tipoo - Monday, March 19, 2012 - link
They give the drivers their own tweaks and bug fixes, but I doubt they could do something like add T&L without the manufacturers support. In fact, they didn't, unless they have bigger driver teams now.ClagMaster - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
"Personally, I want more and I suspect that Haswell will deliver much of that. It is worth pointing out that Intel is progressing at a faster rate than the discrete GPU industry at this point. Admittedly the gap is downright huge, but from what I've heard even the significant gains we're seeing here with Ivy will pale in comparison to what Haswell provides."Personally, I believe on-board graphics will never be on par with a dedicated graphics part. And it is obcessive-compulsive ridiculous to compare the performance of the HD4000 with discrete graphics and complain its not as good.
The HD4000 is meant for providing graphics for business and multi-media computers. And for that purpose it is outstanding.
If you want gaming or engineering workstation performance, get a discrete graphics card. And stop angsting about how bad onboard graphics is to discrete graphics.
pottermd - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home.The article contained this statement. It's not really true. I've had a long nap and the render I'm doing is still running. :)
Dracusis - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
"The people who need integrated graphics"No one *needs* integrated graphics. But not everyone needs discrete graphics. The higher performance an IGP has, the less people overall will *need* DGPs.
Not all games need dedicated graphics cards, just the multi million dollar re-hashed COD's that choke retail stores. There are literally thousands of other games around that only require a small amount of graphics processing power. Flash now has 3D accelerated content and almost every developer using it will target IGP performance levels. Almost all casual game developers target IGPs as well, they're not selling to COD players. Sure, most of those games won't need a hight end CPU as well, but people don't buy computers to play casual games, they buy them for a massive range of tasks, the vast majority of which will be CPU bound so faster would be better.
Also, as an indie game developer I hit performance walls with CPUs more often than I do with GPUs. You can always scale back geometry/triangle counts, trim or cut certain visual effects but cutting back on CPU related overheads generally means you're cutting out gameplay.