The Lineup: Quad-Core Only for Now

Very telling of how times have changed is that today's Ivy Bridge launch only comes with a single Extreme Edition processor—the Core i7-3920XM, a mobile part. There are some great enthusiast desktop parts of course, but as with Sandy Bridge the desktop Extreme Edition is reserved for another platform. In this case, we're talking about LGA-2011 which won't launch in an Ivy flavor until the end of this year/early next year at this point.


From left to right: Clarkdale, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge E

Contrary to everything I've been saying thus far however is the nature of the launch: only quad-core parts will be available first. The dual-core, and more importantly for Ivy Bridge, the ultra low voltage parts won't come until May/June. That means the bigger notebooks and naturally the performance desktops will arrive first, followed by the ultraportables, Ultrabooks and more affordable desktops. This strategy makes sense as the volumes for expensive quad-core notebooks and performance desktops in general are lower than cheaper dual-core notebooks/desktops. From what I've heard, the move to 22nm has been the most challenging transition Intel's fab teams have ever faced, which obviously constrains initial supplies.

Intel 2012 CPU Lineup (Standard Power)
Processor Core Clock Cores / Threads L3 Cache Max Turbo Intel HD Graphics TDP Price
Intel Core i7 3960X 3.3GHz 6 / 12 15MB 3.9GHz N/A 130W $999
Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz 6 / 12 12MB 3.8GHz N/A 130W $583
Intel Core i7 3820 3.6GHz 4 / 8 10MB 3.9GHz N/A 130W $294
Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz 4 / 8 8MB 3.9GHz 4000 77W $313
Intel Core i7 3770 3.4GHz 4 / 8 8MB 3.9GHz 4000 77W $278
Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.8GHz 4000 77W $212
Intel Core i5 3550 3.3GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.7GHz 2500 77W $194
Intel Core i5 3450 3.1GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.5GHz 2500 77W $174
Intel Core i7 2700K 3.5GHz 4 / 8 8MB 3.9GHz 3000 95W $332
Intel Core i5 2550K 3.4GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.8GHz N/A 95W $225
Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.7GHz 2000 95W $205
Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.4GHz 2000 95W $195
Intel Core i5 2320 3.0GHz 4 / 4 6MB 3.3GHz 2000 95W $177

There are five 77W desktop parts launching today, three 65W parts and one 45W part. The latter four are either T or S SKUs (lower leakage, lower TDP and lower clocked parts), while the first five are traditional, standard power parts. 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.

We've already gone through Ivy's architecture in detail so check out our feature here for more details if you haven't already.

Intel 2012 Additional CPU Features (Standard Power)
Processor GPU Clock (base) GPU Clock (max) PCIe 3.0 Intel SIPP Intel vPro Intel VT-d Intel TXT
Intel Core i7 3770K 650MHz 1150MHz Yes No No No No
Intel Core i7 3770 650MHz 1150MHz Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Intel Core i5 3570K 650MHz 1150MHz Yes No No No No
Intel Core i5 3550 650MHz 1150MHz Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Intel Core i5 3450 650MHz 1100MHz Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

The successful K-series SKUs are front and center in the Ivy lineup. As you'll remember from Sandy Bridge, anything with a K suffix ships fully unlocked. Ivy Bridge K-series SKUs support multipliers of up to 63x, an increase from the 57x maximum on Sandy Bridge. This won't impact most users unless you're doing any exotic cooling however.

If you don't have a K in your product name then your part is either partially or fully locked. Although this doesn't apply to any of the CPUs launching today, Ivy Bridge chips without support for turbo are fully locked and cannot be overclocked.

If your chip does support turbo boost, then you can overclock via increasing turbo ratios by as much as 4 bins above their standard setting. For example, the Core i7 3550 has a max turbo frequency of 3.7GHz with a single core active. Add another four bins (4 x 100MHz) and you get a maximum overclock of 4.1GHz, with one core active. The other turbo ratios can also be increased by up to four bins.

Sandy Bridge vs. Ivy Bridge Pricing
Sandy Bridge Price Price Ivy Bridge
Core i7 2700K $332 $313 Core i7 3770K
Core i7 2600 $294 $278 Core i7 3770
Core i5 2550K $225 $212 Core i5 3750K
Core i5 2500 $205 $194 Core i5 3550
Core i5 2400 $184 $174 Core i5 3450

The 3770K is the new king of the hill and it comes in $19 cheaper than the hill's previous resident: the Core i7 2700K. The non-K version saves you $16 compared to Sandy Bridge. The deltas continue down the line ranging ranging from $10—$19.

Unlike the Sandy Bridge launch, Intel is offering its high-end GPU on more than just K-series desktop parts right away. It is also differentiating K from non-K by adding another 100MHz to the base clock for K series parts. While the Core i7 2600K and Core i7 2600 both ran at 3.3GHz, the 3770 runs at 3.4GHz compared to the 3770K's 3.5GHz. It's a small difference but one that Intel hopes will help justify the added cost of the K.

Classic feature segmentation is alive and well with Ivy Bridge. In the quad-core lineup, only Core i7s get Hyper Threading—Core i5s do not. When the dual-core Core i3s show up in the coming months they will once again do so without support for turbo boost. Features like VT-d and Intel TXT are once again reserved for regular, non-K-series parts alone.

 

Introduction Die Size and Transistor Count
Comments Locked

173 Comments

View All Comments

  • ijozic - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Maybe because people who prefer to have the IPS screen would also like to have support for graphics switching to have a nice battery life while not doing anything GPU intensive. This was the one thing I expected from Ivy Bridge upgrade and NADA.
  • uibo - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Does anyone know if the 24Hz issue has been resolved?
  • uibo - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    nevermind just saw the htpc perspective review
  • anirudhs - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    I didn't notice that issue. 23.976*1000 = 23976 frames, 24 * 1000 = 24000 frames, in 16 mins 40 secs. So that's about one second of mismatch for every 1000 seconds. I could not notice this discrepancy while playing a Blu Ray on my PC. Could you?
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Okay, well, I'm pretty sure that you would notice two seconds of discrepancy between audio and video after half an hour of viewing, or four seconds after an hour, or eight seconds by the end of a two-hour movie.

    However, the issue is actually more like having a duplicated frame every 40 seconds or so, causing a visible stutter, which seems like it would be really obnoxious if you started seeing it. I don't use the on-board SB video, so I can't speak to it, but clearly it is an issue for many people.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    I watch Hulu and Netflix streams on a regular basis. They do far more than "stutter" one frame out of every 960. And yet, I'm fine with their quality and so our millions of other viewers. I think the crowd that really gets irritated by the 23.976 FPS problems is diminishingly small. Losing A/V sync would be a horrible problem, but AFAIK that's not what happens so really it's just a little 0.04 second "hitch" every 40 seconds.
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Well, I can certainly appreciate that argument; I don't really use either of those services, but I know from experience they can be glitchy. On the other hand, if I'm watching a DVD (or <ahem> some other video file <ahem>) and it skips even a little bit, I know that I will notice it and usually it drives me nuts.

    I'm not saying that it's a good (or, for that matter, bad) thing that I react that way, and I know that most people would think that I was being overly sensitive (which is cool, I guess, but people ARE different from one another). The point is, if the movie stutters every 40 seconds, there are definitely people who will notice. They will especially notice if everything else about the viewing experience is great. And I think it's understandable if they are disappointed at a not insignificant flaw in what is otherwise a good product.

    Now, if my math is right, it sounds like they've really got the problem down to once every six-and-a-half minutes, rather than every 40 seconds. You know, for me, I could probably live with that in an HTPC. But I certainly wouldn't presume to speak for everyone.
  • anirudhs - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link

    I will get a discrete GPU and then do a comparison.
  • anirudhs - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    a discrete GPU! I could use a bump in transcoding performance for my ever-growing library of Blu-Rays.
  • chizow - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link

    Looks like my concerns a few years ago with Intel's decision to go on-package and eventually on-die GPU were well warranted.

    It seems as if Intel will be focusing much of the benefits from smaller process nodes toward improving GPU performance rather than CPU performance with that additional transistor budget and power saving.

    I guess we will have to wait for IVB-E before we get a real significant jump in performance in the CPU segment, but I'm really not that optimistic at this point.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now