General Performance

The general performance of the Core i5-3470 is nothing too unusual. We know from our original Ivy Bridge review that the advantage over Sandy Bridge is typically in the single digits. In other words, if Sandy Bridge was a good upgrade for your current system, Ivy Bridge won't change things. Idle power doesn't really improve over Sandy Bridge, but load power is a bit better.

Compared to the 3770K, you will lose out on heavily threaded performance due to the lack of Hyper Threading. But for many client workloads, including gaming, you can expect the 3470 to perform quite similarly to the 3770K.

SYSMark 2012 - Overall

x264 HD Benchmark - 1st pass - v3.03

x264 HD Benchmark - 2nd pass - v3.03

7-zip Benchmark

AES-128 Performance - TrueCrypt 7.1 Benchmark

Metro 2033 Frontline Benchmark - 1024 x 768 - DX11 High Quality

Metro 2033 Frontline Benchmark - 1920 x 1200 - DX11 High Quality

DiRT 3 - Aspen Benchmark - 1024 x 768 Low Quality

DiRT 3 - Aspen Benchmark - 1920 x 1200 High Quality

Crysis Warhead Assault Benchmark - 1680 x 1050 Mainstream DX10 64-bit

Power Consumption Comparison
Intel DZ77GA-70K Idle Load (x264 2nd pass)
Intel Core i7-3770K 60.9W 121.2W
Intel Core i5-3470 54.4W 96.6W
Intel Core i5-3470 @ 4GHz 54.4W 110.1W
Intel HD 2500: Compute, Synthetics & Power Final Words
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  • MonkeyPaw - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    You can always go with the 2120T. It's only 35W (4 threads) and would beat the pants off the other 2 options you are considering.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
  • nubie - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    I have to second the G620, they are damn cheap, about half the price of the 2120T, and you aren't losing any level 3 cache.
  • SleepIT - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link

    I use the mini-ITX Atom-based boards running Ubuntu/Webmin for NAS's (OS on thumbdrive, 4 x 2Tb drives on the latest). Performance is stellar!
  • majfop - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Upping the Turbo Boost multipliers for the 400 MHz overclock is only on Z75 and Z77, right? That makes it very much less "free" I would say.

    There seem to be some reasonable budget option B75 and H77 motherboards, not to mention the previous socket 1155 offerings with an updated BIOS to accept the IVB processor.
  • iwod - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    I sometimes wish Intel could just present a Lineup for OEM, another for Retail Consumers. To greatly simplify Lineup. Just looking at the Lineup Hurts my brain and eyes, they could just offer all CPU with HT, 2 / 4 Core Variants with Speed Differentiation would be MORE then enough for me.

    Then AMD is plain stupid for not capturing more market shares with their APU. Their new CEO has it right, where he had watched AMD systematically shoot itself in the foot, over and over again.
  • BSMonitor - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    It's ALL for OEM's. Retail CPU consumers are such a tiny fraction of the pie. Consumers just jump in where the CPU fits them best.

    The only consumer aimed retail products are the high end i7 hex-cores.
  • silverblue - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Rory Read wasn't responsible for Fusion in any way; the only thing he can realistically do here is to push as many resources at getting APUs out of the door as possible.
  • thunderising - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    One could have atleast hoped for HD3000 in a 200$ chip, not HD2500 crap
  • ShieTar - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    HD3000 is not 500 HDs better than HD2500, it is in fact an older, less capable version of HD graphics. The numbering scheme is admittedly silly, but thats to be expected from Intel by now.

    In the end, this CPU is not meant for gamers, not even if they want Ivy Bridge for a low cost. For 60$ less than the 3470 you will soon get the 2 core / 4 threads i3-3220. For a low budget gamer, this will still give you more than enough CPU power to team with any GPU you can afford. And those 60$ you saved can buy you an AMD 6670, which should be at least twice as fast as HD4000.

    The 3470 makes much more sense for people that can accept minimal GPU power, but appreciate the increased CPU power of the (real) quadcore. Think office PC handling massive excel files with loads of calculations: Not enough to warrant a Xeon based system, but definitly enough to make the 60$ premium from a dual core worthwhile.
  • CeriseCogburn - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link

    The idea that any poor sap has to game on any 2000, 2500, 3000, or 4000, or llano, or trinity, is too much to bear.

    What a PATHETIC place to be. How the heck is someone going to spend on HD3000 or HD4000 and the board and accompanying items and not have $75-$100 for say a GTX460 ?

    I mean how badly do these people plan on torturing themselves and what point are they really trying to prove ?

    They could get a $100 amd phemon 2 and a $100 GTX 460 if they want to game, and be so far ahead...

    This whole scene is one big bad freaking JOKE.

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