Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it was the first AAA DX10+ game. Consequently it makes no attempt to shy away from pushing the graphics envelope, and pushing GPUs to their limits at the same time. Even at low settings Battlefield 3 is a handful, and to be able to run it on an iGPU would no doubt make quite a few traveling gamers happy.

So does Ivy Bridge reach its goal here? Kind of. 37.3 is playable in single player, but it's been in our experience that multiplayer framerates can bottom out at half our SP benchmark, which means Ivy Bridge would be bottoming out in the high teens.

All things considered however, this is another case of Intel greatly improving their performance. Compared to Sandy Bridge, Ivy bridge is 48% faster, once again well ahead of the clockspeed and EU count improvements for HD 4000. Intel's improved shader performance plays a large part here, but BF3 provides a good mix of shading, texturing, and geometry stress at low settings, meaning Ivy Bridge is getting a full workout. As a result it's also once again closing the gap on Llano, trailing AMD's iGPU by only 25% here.

Intel HD 4000 Performance: Portal 2 Intel HD 4000 Performance: Starcraft II
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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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