Buy the CyberPower BX80637I73770K
Wal-Mart
$997.88
TigerDirect
$1,699.99
Wal-Mart
$1,468.87

Switching gears for the moment we have Minecraft, our OpenGL title. It's no secret that OpenGL usage on the PC has fallen by the wayside in recent years, and as far major games go Minecraft is one of but a few recently released major titles using OpenGL. Minecraft is incredibly simple—not even utilizing pixel shaders let alone more advanced hardware—but this doesn't mean it's easy to render. Its use of massive amounts of blocks (and the overdraw that creates) means you need solid hardware and an efficient OpenGL implementation if you want to hit playable framerates with a far render distance. Consequently, as the most successful OpenGL game in quite some number of years (at over 5.5mil copies sold), it's a good reminder for GPU manufacturers that OpenGL is not to be ignored.

Our test here is pretty simple: we're looking at lush forest after the world finishes loading. In spite of a lack of any kind of shader workload for Ivy Bridge, it's still struggling here. On the one hand this is the single biggest gain over Sandy Bridge we've seen in any of our tests, with Ivy Bridge improving on its predecessor by an incredible 130%, and at the same time it's still only competitive with the entry-level discrete GPUs. Worse, for all of its gains, Ivy Bridge is still only achieving a mere 30% of the performance of Llano here.

Since this is largely a pixel pushing test, we'd expect Llano and Ivy Bridge to be closer than where they are. Given the gains versus Sandy Bridge Intel may still have some ROP bottlenecks that only come out in unusual workloads like Minecraft, but at the same time it's hard to imagine that OpenGL drivers aren't playing a role here. If that's the case, then Intel clearly has some work to do.

Intel HD 4000 Performance: Skyrim Intel HD 4000 Performance: Civilization V
POST A COMMENT

172 Comments

View All Comments

  • pwnsweet - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link

    The only thing I care about is how much faster this new slab of silicon will power though my x264 encoding and that's the one part of the review that was left out!

    Why anand, why!?
    Reply
  • pwnsweet - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link

    nevermind, I'm an idiot. I found it. Reply
  • PG - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link

    http://ark.intel.com/products/65511/Intel-Core-i5-... Reply
  • ktmobi - Wednesday, May 02, 2012 - link

    Keep in mind that in Ivy Bridge, CPU speed is directly propotional to GPU's speed + performance.

    Source - http://mobilityupdate.com/notebooks/intel-hd-4000-...
    Reply
  • BSMonitor - Wednesday, May 02, 2012 - link

    In the mobile line up, there is only 1 SKU for Intel Processors. As they cut back on the CPU, the HD3000 or HD4000 remains for ALL mobile GPUs. Reply
  • SalientKing - Tuesday, May 08, 2012 - link

    I just got a 3450, the tag on it says 95w, your chart here says 77w. I'm a little worried i just got a repackaged SB cpu.... Reply
  • warmbit - Wednesday, May 09, 2012 - link

    For those who want to see a comparison of 3770K to 2600k in more games (several sites), please check the article:

    http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=pl&sl...
    Reply
  • DaddyMacCadillac - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link

    "Quick Sync's transcoding abilities are limited to applications like Media Espresso or ArcSoft's Media Converter—there's still no support in open source applications like Handbrake."

    Umm, try MediaCoder, steep learning curve but it works great! I also wish Handbrake would adopt this technology...
    Reply
  • midn8t - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link

    I would like to say that they do not seem to say what they are running for GPU, also I own the fx chip in this review and would like to say that with the 7970 driect cuII asua vide card, I get way over those FPS in dawn of war maxed out gfxs I am getting 134 average fps

    I also own dragonage and when I am running fraps I am getting maxed res max AA getting 139 average fps

    cyris I get 139 fps and I get civ 5 225 fps

    be honest the cpu has little to do with FPS its video card mostly anyways I am running eyeinfity setup on top of this and getting these fps in game according to fraps
    Reply
  • midn8t - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link

    I have the AMD FX 8150 and I also own Crysis: Warhead, Civilization V, Dawn of War II, and Dragon Age Origins and I get way better FPS then they claimed to have gotten I mean my FPS are almsot double that, sometimes tripple and I am using Farps

    for exampel Civ 5 I get average of 190 FPS in game maxed out res with eyeinfity using Fraps

    but I am also using a 7970 Directcu2 GPU
    Reply

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now