The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Ryan Smith on April 23, 2012 12:03 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Ivy Bridge
Portal 2 continues to be the latest and greatest Source engine game to come out of Valve's offices. While Source continues to be a DX9 engine, and hence is designed to allow games to be playable on a wide range of hardware, Valve has continued to upgrade it over the years to improve its quality, and combined with their choice of style you’d have a hard time telling it’s over 7 years old at this point. From a rendering standpoint Portal 2 isn't particularly geometry heavy, but it does make plenty of use of shaders.
Since Portal 2 is another shader heavy game, this ends up being another struggle for Ivy Bridge. Compared to Sandy Bridge performance has once again rocketed up, this time by 39% at 1366, once more indicating just how much the 33% increase in EUs and the improved turbo has improved Intel's GPU performance. At the same time like our previous shader-heavy games it's just trailing GT 520, while Llano enjoys a 100% lead. To that end while we did end up using 4x MSAA at 1366, it's not clear that disabling it would significantly improve performance for Ivy Bridge here since MSAA doesn't increase the shader workload.
It's worth noting however that this is the one game where we encountered something that may be a rendering error with Ivy Bridge. Based on our image quality screenshots Ivy Bridge renders a distinctly "busier" image than Llano or NVIDIA's GPUs. It's not clear whether this is causing an increased workload on Ivy Bridge, but it's worth considering.
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sld - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
.... and in this multivariate comparison you choose to ignore the superior battery life which makes Llano a serious competitor in the mobile space.midn8t - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link
this the frames pre secound for CPU, you cant really figure out well when gamming its all mostly based around what ever video card they used, in this artical so I would have to guess that they might have used diffrent GPU video card in each system.obivuously they cant use same motherboard for amd vs intel
Also I find it wired that other reciews have Rated the phenom II x6 lower in preformance then the FX chip makes it wired how these review claims that the phenom II which is lower grade CPU is more powerfull then the top of the line AMD product out.
zeagus - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
A huge chunk of text is spent explaining how while its a step in the right direction, they need to do more on the GPU side of the equation. Take off your strangely coloured glasses.wingless - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
EDIT: I'M NOT KIDDING. I bought my 2600K the Friday before last for $199 and paired it with an ASUS P8Z77-V PRO. Ivy Bridge is simply too hot and lacks OC performance.I overclock so I WILL be keeping my 2600K for the foreseeable future!
fredisdead - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
So HD4000 igp is weaker than last gen Brazos ?? Based on the leaked Trinity benchmarks, Trinity blows any Intel igp into the weeds, never mind the ( already 1.5 yr old ) Brazos, which is 'only' 5% faster.fredisdead - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
So HD4000 igp is weaker than last gen Brazos ?? Based on the leaked Trinity benchmarks, Trinity blows any Intel igp into the weeds, never mind the ( already 1.5 yr old ) Brazos, which is 'only' 5% faster.1ceTr0n - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I'll keep my 2500k @ 4.6ghzNot kidding
smookyolo - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
And I'll keep mine at 4.9GHz.But that's just because I'll be waiting for the tock, not the tick.
I will however be getting a Ivy Bridge Laptop soon.
Flunk - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Me too, the 2500K is a great chip. Especially with watercooling.Ratman6161 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
For anyone like me who already has a Sandy Bridge quad core (mine's a 2600K) it wouldn't make a lot of sense to "upgrade" to an Ivy bridge. But for those with older systems looking to upgrade, these actually seem like pretty good deals. @ $313 the 3770K is cheaper than the 2700K and cheaper than the typical price on a 2600K (unless like me you are lucky enough to live near a Micro Center).As to those complaining about graphics, come on. Will anyone who really cares a lot about graphics, particularly gaming, be using the on board graphics anyway?