Manufacturer: Intel Price: $ N/A US Author: Steve Date: 04/20/2012

[ Introduction ]

Today Intel is unveiling their latest CPU microarchitecture which has been codenamed Ivy Bridge. Intel has been following the tick-tock rule for the past few years, which sees a new architecture and smaller design process released over a 2-year cycle... Currently we are on a “tock” with the Sandy Bridge architecture and later this month we will move back to a “tick” with Ivy Bridge. The last tick was the Westmere architecture which saw Intel move from the 45nm to the 32nm design process. Ivy Bridge on the other hand marks the move to the 22nm design process and while the microarchitecture remains the same as the previous generation, the smaller design will mean greater efficiency and it will also allow Intel to cram more into the same size die. This is good news for consumers, as “ticks” do not generally require an entire system overhaul because the microarchitecture is largely the same. This is the case with Ivy Bridge, which will remain an LGA1155 socket solution. This means Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors will share the same socket and that means those already using a Cougar Point (6-series chipset) motherboard can upgrade to an Ivy Bridge processor without having to junk their existing motherboard. The 6-series motherboard will require a BIOS update to work with the new Ivy Bridge processors, but other than that compatibility is guaranteed. Although this is a tick release Intel is calling it a tick+ as the GPU side of things has seen a more significant overhaul. For years Intel has gotten by with lackluster GPU performance from their integrated chipsets and when moving the GPU on-die they continued to peddle the same subpar performance that they always have. Unfortunately it will not be until the Haswell architecture makes its debut in the 2Q of 2013 that we will see a significant improvement on the GPU front from Intel. However for now Intel needed something better than what the Sandy Bridge architecture delivered to tide them over. Therefore Ivy Bridge has been upgraded to provide around 20–50% better GPU performance, which is the kind of performance improvement that we would expect from a tock release. The new Core i7-3770K processor will give us our first look at the Ivy Bridge architecture and show us what it is all about. With that said, let’s jump into some benchmarks...

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< Test System Specs Memory Performance Application Performance Encoding Performance Discrete GPU Performance On-die GPU Performance Overclocking Performance Power Consumption Conclusion Next Page ->

Calle2003 Posts: 16 Joined: 2010-04-27

Posted on: 04/23/2012 09:40 PM What kind of cooling did you use to be able to run 1.520v on an Ivy Bridge? It would be interesting to see some temperature readings as well.

ProX	Posted on: 04/24/2012 11:22 AM Nice update but nothing majorly new.

Snoop

Posted on: 04/24/2012 11:52 PM I was just getting ready to upgrade from my core i5 750 system so this is prefect timing. Thanks for the review.

Produkt

Posted on: 04/28/2012 08:30 AM Would really like to see the temps and cooling method used to sustain a 1.520v on the Ivy Bridge architecture. With such a small die size to dissipate heat, I can only imagine TERRIBLE temperatures. Reports of 90+ degrees Celsius are streaming in from mere 1.4v overclocks. I would imagine due to the parabolic temperature to voltage ratio, the core must have gotten red-hot unless cooled with liquid hydrogen/nitrogen.