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
Switching gears for the moment we have Minecraft, our OpenGL title. It's no secret that OpenGL usage on the PC has fallen by the wayside in recent years, and as far major games go Minecraft is one of but a few recently released major titles using OpenGL. Minecraft is incredibly simple—not even utilizing pixel shaders let alone more advanced hardware—but this doesn't mean it's easy to render. Its use of massive amounts of blocks (and the overdraw that creates) means you need solid hardware and an efficient OpenGL implementation if you want to hit playable framerates with a far render distance. Consequently, as the most successful OpenGL game in quite some number of years (at over 5.5mil copies sold), it's a good reminder for GPU manufacturers that OpenGL is not to be ignored.
Our test here is pretty simple: we're looking at lush forest after the world finishes loading. In spite of a lack of any kind of shader workload for Ivy Bridge, it's still struggling here. On the one hand this is the single biggest gain over Sandy Bridge we've seen in any of our tests, with Ivy Bridge improving on its predecessor by an incredible 130%, and at the same time it's still only competitive with the entry-level discrete GPUs. Worse, for all of its gains, Ivy Bridge is still only achieving a mere 30% of the performance of Llano here.
Since this is largely a pixel pushing test, we'd expect Llano and Ivy Bridge to be closer than where they are. Given the gains versus Sandy Bridge Intel may still have some ROP bottlenecks that only come out in unusual workloads like Minecraft, but at the same time it's hard to imagine that OpenGL drivers aren't playing a role here. If that's the case, then Intel clearly has some work to do.
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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
+1I 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...