The Haswell Review: Intel Core i7-4770K & i5-4670K Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
I’m a fan of Haswell, even on the desktop. The performance gains over Ivy Bridge depend on workload, but in general you’re looking at low single digits to just under 20%. We saw great behavior in many of our FP heavy benchmarks as well as our Visual Studio compile test. If you’re upgrading from Sandy Bridge you can expect to see an average improvement just under 20%, while coming from an even older platform like Nehalem will yield closer to a 40% increase in performance at the same clocks. As always, annual upgrades are tough to justify although Haswell may be able to accomplish that in mobile.
Even on the desktop, idle power reductions are apparent both at the CPU level and at the platform level. Intel focused on reducing CPU power, and it seems like Intel's motherboard partners did the same as well. Under load Haswell can draw more power than Ivy Bridge but it typically makes up for it with better performance.
Overclockers may be disappointed at the fact that Haswell is really no more of an overclocker (on air) compared to Ivy Bridge. Given the more mobile focused nature of design, and an increased focus on eliminating wasted power, I don’t know that we’ll ever see a return to the heyday of overclocking.
If the fact that you can’t easily get tons of additional frequency headroom at marginal increase to CPU voltage is the only real downside to the platform, then I’d consider Haswell a success on the desktop. You get more performance and a better platform at roughly the same prices as Ivy Bridge a year ago. It’s not enough to convince folks who just bought a PC over the past year or two to upgrade again, but if you are upgrading from even a 3 year old machine the performance gains will be significant.
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Iketh - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Your post is so ignorant that you should have posting privileges revoked.gryer7421 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
? Everyone knew this was intels piledriver revision.Donkey2008 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
When you are "cynical" you will "see" nothing "good" in anything.jonjonjonj - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
i agree. its annoying that intel is designing their desktop cpu's to also compete with arm in mobile. why can't intel develop 2 different versions or architectures? is power efficiency the limiting factor and if TDP and power was no concern how much better could intel do?i personally don't care about power on my desktop as long as the performance justifies it. desktop cpu's should be about performance not saving power.
Death666Angel - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
How can you be disappointed when Haswell gives you exactly what was promised? It seems like you should have adjusted your expectations. Or you just like to be disappointed.I'm not surprised by these numbers, they are what was expected. I'm still running an i7-860 @3.8GHz and when I get enough money I'll upgrade to an i7-4770k and hopefully be able to run it at 4.5GHz, give or take some (water cooling setup here). Maybe IVB-E if it tests well and money is not too tight.
Anand really needs a Lynnfield for comparisons, because the i7-9xx was geared towards people running the enthusiast platform, whereas all the other CPUs tested here are geared towards mainstream high end.
ninjaquick - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Haswell at 1.8 GHz is a completely different story to any of this... Mark my words: You will never see 3.4 GHz parts in tablets, ever.However, a 30% improvement in efficiency can be roughly translated to a 30% increase in performance per watt. That is massive in tablets.
Sure, it won't be a 3.4 GHz tablet part, but it will also be a bit quicker than a 1.6 GHz tablet part.
mkygod - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Of course they are comparing to older CPUs because the article made a point to say that it does not make a whole lot of sense to upgrade from Ivy Bridge. But still, 5-10% faster compared to Ivy bridge is pretty good i would say for the extra ~$10-20 dollar difference.boe - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Its just as good as ivy bridge - pretty much ivy bridge pretending to be something new.Dnann - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
It seems that not as good as I was imagining. :Orudolphna - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Honestly, the best part of the review was the comparisons to older chips. It's entertaining to see just how terrible the Pentium 4 was in hindsight.