The Haswell Review: Intel Core i7-4770K & i5-4670K Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
I’m a fan of Haswell, even on the desktop. The performance gains over Ivy Bridge depend on workload, but in general you’re looking at low single digits to just under 20%. We saw great behavior in many of our FP heavy benchmarks as well as our Visual Studio compile test. If you’re upgrading from Sandy Bridge you can expect to see an average improvement just under 20%, while coming from an even older platform like Nehalem will yield closer to a 40% increase in performance at the same clocks. As always, annual upgrades are tough to justify although Haswell may be able to accomplish that in mobile.
Even on the desktop, idle power reductions are apparent both at the CPU level and at the platform level. Intel focused on reducing CPU power, and it seems like Intel's motherboard partners did the same as well. Under load Haswell can draw more power than Ivy Bridge but it typically makes up for it with better performance.
Overclockers may be disappointed at the fact that Haswell is really no more of an overclocker (on air) compared to Ivy Bridge. Given the more mobile focused nature of design, and an increased focus on eliminating wasted power, I don’t know that we’ll ever see a return to the heyday of overclocking.
If the fact that you can’t easily get tons of additional frequency headroom at marginal increase to CPU voltage is the only real downside to the platform, then I’d consider Haswell a success on the desktop. You get more performance and a better platform at roughly the same prices as Ivy Bridge a year ago. It’s not enough to convince folks who just bought a PC over the past year or two to upgrade again, but if you are upgrading from even a 3 year old machine the performance gains will be significant.
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chizow - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Nice review Anand, it's pretty much what I expected from Haswell. 5-15% over IVB with all the bells and whistles of Lynx Point Z87 (6xSATA6G, more USB 3.0 etc.) This will make a nice upgrade for me coming from an OC'd i7-920 and X58 platform, now to see what deals MicroCenter has on the 4770K.I would have liked to have seen normalized clockspeed comparisons in the 5-gen Intel round-up but understand this does not reflect real-world results, given SB and above have much better turbo boost and base clocks. I think it would've given a better idea of IPC however, for those who have been overclocking their older platforms to similar max OC levels.
I also would have liked to have seen more gaming and OC'ing tests but understand this first review needed to cover most of the bases for a general audience, look forward to more testing in the future along with some looks at the Z87 chipset nuances.
Concillian - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
So what I'm seeing is 4770 compared with 3770... ~13% more power at load for Hasswell, but less than 10% more performance in the benchmarks? Is that correct?A5 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Anand's numbers put it at 13% faster with an 11% power increase. Not sure how you did the math.Concillian - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
You're right in that particular test. +12% power for +13% performance. Still disappointing. Most of the other benchmarks are showing less than 10% improvement, but we don't know the power story. Overall disappointing. With all the talk about power efficiency, I was hoping for +5-10% performance at the same or lower power consumption. All the power benefits seem to be at idle.gipper51 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I'm glad I went ahead and built my 3770 system a few months ago instead of holding out for Haswell. Nothing about Haswell was worth waiting for (for my needs). Damn...based on this and Intel's roadmaps I may be on IVB for a looooong time.LordSegan - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Very weak new chip. Minimal increase in performance unless you are running a render farm or using a crappy ultra book. Useless for desktop gamers.vlvh - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I'm just wondering what the rationalisation for using a Core 2 Duo for comparison benching is? Surely a Core 2 Quad (eg Q6600) would be a more accurate representation seeing as all the other parts in the benchmark are quad core.WhoBeDaPlaya - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
You'd think Anand would have covered something as important as this.I did not see this in _any_ of the reviews.
Also, the wording on the BCLK overclocking is a little odd. So bottom line - can we OC the 4770 using BCLK or not?
Kevin G - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
The actual BLCK changes will be pretty much inline with what you'd be able to do on Z68 or Z77, about 110 Mhz max.Socket 1150 and Z87 add another bus multiplier to feed the CPU like socket 2011 parts have. So you can have a 100 Mhz clock feeding the PCI-E controller with a 1.25x multiplier a 125 Mhz clock will feed the CPU cores before the CPU multiplier. Increasing the BCLK to 108 Mhz and a 1.25 bus multiplier would equate to a 135 Mhz clock before the CPU multiplier is applied.
jmcb - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
All this means is when I finally get my first quad core PC, a 3770k will be cheaper. I see no reason to get this over that.