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
Power Consumption
Intel isn't really exploiting 22nm for significantly higher default or max turbo frequencies. While it does seem like you'll hit turbo frequencies more often with Ivy, most of what 22nm offers will be realized as power savings.
The data in the charts below is from our original 3770K preview, however I've also provided a table comparing the 3770K to the 2700K using Intel's own Z77 motherboard which is a bit more power hungry than our typical testbed:
Power Consumption Comparison | ||||
Intel DZ77GA-70K | Idle | Load (x264 2nd pass) | ||
Intel Core i7 3770K | 80.1W | 146.4W | ||
Intel Core i7 2700K | 79.4W | 177.6W |
As you can see, there are no savings at idle and a reasonably significant improvement under load.
The same is echoed on our earlier chip in a more power efficient platform:
I was also curious to see what power consumption would look like compared to other low-end GPUs. For these next results I used the 3770K alone, without a discrete card and measured power consumption. I then added in discrete GPUs from our HD 4000 comparisons and looked at both idle and load power while playing Metro 2033:
Obviously at idle it's impossible to beat the HD 4000, the GPU is largely stopped/gated when idle keeping power consumption to a minimum. Under load is where things get interesting:
Ivy's GPU is much more power efficient than SNB's, however Intel still has a way to go before it starts to equal the power efficiency of modern discrete GPU architectures. Remember the HD 4000 is on Intel's 22nm process here while the GT 440 is built on TSMC's 40nm process.
173 Comments
View All Comments
aegisofrime - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
It's interesting to me that this article doesn't include any temperature measurements. I have been hearing that Ivy Bridge has got temperature issues. Could you update the article with those numbers? I'm aware that the article on undervolting and overclocking has some numbers, but none at stock voltage and clocks as far as I know.Stuka87 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I was just going to post the same thing. Where on earth are the temp measurements?Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Ian's article thoroughly covers the thermal issues, and did include a stock clock graph with voltage scaling:http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5763/Stock%20Spee...
Take care,
Anand
Stuka87 - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Thanks for responding Anand.The issue I see is in the future, people will look for this review, and not know to look in another article for temp readings.
And I know the other article did have a temp graph, but it did not have the bar graph comparing it to other CPU's like we are used to. I actually have no clue how it compares to a SNB chip after reading this article in terms of temperatures. It would be great to have that information as it aids in building a new system.
Thanks!
samal90 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Okk...so the A8-3870K beats it in almost every gaming benchmark and they are marketing the HD4000....pretty bad for intel. Trinity will completely destroy Ivy bridge then it seems. Every generation, one company is slacking off behind the other...it's always like that. Next year, intel will take the crown..then the year after it will be AMD...and so on.N4g4rok - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Not so sure about that actually. I think they're going to fork in two different directions, with Intel being your high compute power desktop friendly option, and AMD being the go to for laptop, notebook, and ultrabook-esque form factors. Unless trinity mucks up big time, AMD will have the IGP thing down. for a while.JarredWalton - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I think you're wrong on the "AMD being the go to for laptop..." part. AMD will be the go-to option for people that want an inexpensive laptop with better IGP performance. As I note in the mobile IVB article, mobile Llano GPU performance isn't nearly as impressive relative to IVB as on the desktop. Anyway, AMD will continue to lead on IGP performance with Trinity I'm sure, but there are very large numbers of laptop users that don't even play games. Of course, the highest selling laptops are still going to be the least expensive laptops.DanNeely - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
For mainstream laptops the real factor is probably going to be battery life. AMD needs to catch up to Intel with power management to get beyond niche products.seasalt - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Why is it listed as 77W when the ones already being sold are clearly marked 95W on the boxes?http://www.nordichardware.com/news/69-cpu-chipset/...
mechwarrior1989 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
It's in the article..."Note that max TDP for Ivy Bridge on the desktop has been reduced from 95W down to 77W thanks to Intel's 22nm process. The power savings do roughly follow that 18W decrease in TDP. Despite the power reduction, you may see 95W labels on boxes and OEMs are still asked to design for 95W as Ivy Bridge platforms can accept both 77W IVB and 95W Sandy Bridge parts."