Bethesda's epic sword & magic game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our RPG of choice for benchmarking. It's altogether a good CPU benchmark thanks to its complex scripting and AI, but it also can end up pushing a large number of fairly complex models and effects at once. This is a DX9 game so it isn't utilizing any of IVB's new DX11 functionality, but it can still be a demanding game.

Ivy Bridge does very well in Skyrim, not able to reach 60 fps but still above 30 at up to 1680 x 1050. The gains over Sandy Bridge are significant at nearly 50%. Meanwhile Ivy Bridge also gets surprisingly close to Llano, bringing the gap down to 10% at 1366 and 18% at 1680. Seeing as how Skyrim is not particularly shader heavy at these settings, Ivy Bridge looks to be largely shrugging off its biggest bottleneck here in favor of pure pixel pushing power.

Intel HD 4000 Performance: Starcraft II Intel HD 4000 Performance: Minecraft
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  • jmcb - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link

    I was thinking the exact same thing.

    I waited long to jump on the dual core bandwagon, 2008 with a C2D 8400. I havent jumped on the quad core wagon yet. Was waiting for them to run cooler.

    This seems like a good time to make the jump.
  • CeriseCogburn - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    I'm going to get rid of my 2500K @ 4.8GHz , because it's HD3000 just isn't doing it for BF3,

    and I'm going Trinity man !

    See me and my amd apu on the gaming servers !

    a. totally wanna be cool amd fan
    b. fantasy boy with lunch money from mommie in pocket
    c. bonkers
    d. all the above
  • p05esto - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Yea, but WHEN can I buy one? Forgive me if I missed that all important detail. My desktop is 2.5 yrs old and am ready to upgrade here. Show me where to buy, lol.
  • Catalina588 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    OEM boxes arrive April 29th. I expect NewEgg will have parts shortly thereafter.
  • tiki037 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link

    +1

    I thought the April 23 launch date meant that was when we would be able to buy one.
  • Tommyv2 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Why no benchmarks against a 2700K, you know - a real platform comparison? I'm guessing it's exactly the same performance?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Working on testing the 2700K now - didn't have one at the time that the CPU tests were conducted, the difference is small as you can guess, will add results to bench as they are completed.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Ratman6161 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    ...but really, they already have large quantities of benchmarks of the 2600K and the difference between that and 2700K is going to be relatively meaningless...my guess, not worth the trouble of running the whole suite of benchmarks on it. To my knowledge, the only difference is 100 MHz of clock speed, right?
  • deadsix - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Any chance Anand that we get a 35W Quad Core processor for laptops like the Macbook Pro 13"
  • Kristian Vättö - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    There is i7-3612QM which is a 35W 2.1GHz quad core. Whether Apple uses it is another question, though.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/5772/mobile-ivy-brid...

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