The Ivy Bridge Preview: Core i7 3770K Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 6, 2012 8:16 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i7
- Ivy Bridge
Content Creation Performance
Adobe Photoshop CS4
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Our Photoshop test is well threaded but it doesn't peg all cores constantly. Instead you get burstier behavior. With the core count advantage out of the way, SNB-E steps aside and allows the 3770K to step up as the fastest CPU we've tested here. The performance advantage over the 2600K is around 9%.
3dsmax 9
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
In another FP heavy workload we see a pretty reasonable gain for Ivy Bridge: 8.5% over a 2600K. This isn't enough to make you want to abandon your Sandy Bridge, but it's a good step forward for a tick.
Cinebench 11.5
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
The single threaded Cinebench test shows a 9% performance advantage for the 3770K over the 2600K. The gap increases slightly to 11% as we look at the multithreaded results:
If you're running a workload that can really stress multiple cores, the 6-core Sandy Bridge E parts will remain unstoppable but in the quad-core world, Ivy Bridge leads the pack.
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mrSmigs - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
The ivy bridge 3770k is a direct replacement for the sandy bridge 2700k which is only a small upgrade from the 2600k yet still missing from the benchmarks to allow a direct architectural comparison.Intel badly need powervr in its graphics core.... will they finally use a multicore Rogue series 6 core in the next generation (Haswell???) for some decent performance in their IGP???? They developed easily the fastest graphics core in the arm soc tablets/phones inside the ipad 2/iphone4s now its time to save intel (one of imgtechs biggest shareholders along with apple). Intel need to ditch this old weak igp core architecture and get with the times....
The amd llano even with its terribly weak cpu core still clearly outpaces this new improved intel hd4000 core in these non gpu limited tests. If amd had a faster cpu they would be even further ahead in regards to graphic capabilities, which appear cpu limited in many cases too(see discreet gpu tables to get an idea of intels cpu advantages).
Where are the in game checks on intel's notorious poor image quality, much like when radeons are compared to geforces to ensure these are even producing an acceptable image for the performance they give and not cutting corners???
Happy with the lower power and performance cpu gains of Ivy Bridge. Disappointed in the weak old graphics once again, which fail to match llano even with a far stronger cpu dragging it along...
hasseb64 - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
How about OPEN GL support?numberoneoppa - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Perhaps because not everybody who needs a lot of CPU power also needs to game or do other GPU heavy activities.Come on, mate. Think.
Conficio - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I just wanted to say thank you for this. May be we can add a maven based java test as well, which should give some idea of javac performance (or a large Eclipse base build all).
Conficio - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Uhh, this comment renders funny oh Chrome.piesquared - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Is this some kind of joke? It may be comical, but it sure ain't funny. intel themselves had slides circulating around showing at least 2x performance increasee over last generation. Now they show up with not even half that and Anand falls to his knees in praise.. Seems a little fishy to me where have I seen this before....Right, the primary elections in the US! Same shit, the elite give the mainstream media their marching orders, and the main stream media sets out to brainwash the mass population with that message. And you continue to lead the charge on downplaying image quality and functionality, ever since you became intel's mouthpiece. Where are the days of proper image quality comparisons, and feature benefit to consumers. That's all dropped off the radar because intel has abysmal and atrocious graphics capability and know how. They're the WORST in the industry, and yet he we have good ol' anand patting his buddy on the bumb ensuring that intel will ever have a need to actualy compete. They can just hand off money to the pieces' of shit in the world and have them manipulate the perception.tics
Hector2 - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Sounds like you have some issues. Maybe you should see a therapistawg0681 - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Maybe I misread the article or read a different one. It came across to me that Anand was mainly comparing the HD4000 to HD3000. In which case there is generally a notable increase in performance. It's not 2x the HD3000, but doing a quick search trying to find these slides you mention showing such an increase came up with nothing. Only found one on Tom's which was a leaked slide comparing HD2000 to HD4000. If you could link some of those that would be great. Also, in just about every case where the HD4000 was (almost inevitably) beaten by AMD in graphics performance, it was pointed out.geddarkstorm - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I wonder how much of the improvement in the performance to power ratio is due to the trigate technology. In same ways, I was expecting a bigger jump around 20%, but since they also dropped the power by 30W, that says a lot. Looking at his from the perf/power perspective makes it a bigger deal than it sounds from a 5-15% CPU gain.Still.. for some reason I feel a little disappointed. I thought trigate would change things even more in conjuncture with 22 nm process.
So can't wait to see what Hanswell will do.
Exodite - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Does it matter though?After all that argument cuts both ways.
Any iGPU today is good enough for 2D use, browsing and mainstream gaming - which means stuff like The SIMS 3 rather than Crysis.
The same is true for CPU power.
Heck, most users would be perfectly happy with using their smartphones as a desktop.