Reviews - Intel Core i7-3770K (22nm Ivy Bridge)

[Bloke]

Ivy issues aside, I find it very annoying that a family of processors will be officially launched worldwide but only available to buy, in UK etailers etc, 6 days later....

[Nabobalis]

I think it might be time to upgrade from my Core 2 Duo to one of these.

[Phage]

I for one will just keep using my i7 920 D0 for another generation. Had skipped Sandybridge to see what Ivy had to offer. Not enough for me to part with my hard earned.

Nothing has convinced me that i need to upgrade just yet.

It does look like the jumps in performance are getting smaller with each iteration though.

Also doesn't help that games are being dumbed down for the current generation of consoles

^^This.
EDIT: I'd be willing to bet that the pricing on SB bundles, at Scan and other retailers will now go UP.

[krazy_olie]

That t model could be a little bit of a star. It looks as though the process is more beneficial in lower power situations, down to 45w with only a few Mhz taken off the turbo freq.

will build a new system at some point this year, likely that something from the range will end up in it.

[Scainer]

To be fair I think its been the hype surrounding the launch that has caused the disappointment. All the talk of the improvements, and the most noticeable point to take out of the reviews is that they get hot. I wanted IB to match SB but do so at a cooler temperature so that a build would be quiet on air when fully loaded @ about 4.5GHz.
I am now even more interested for a review on the Be Quiet Dark Rock 2 / Pro.

(off topic: AMD have not dominated GFX card since the 5### in 2009/10. Even then the 460 dominated the mainstream sales, just as the 560Ti has been doing, and I'd expect the same will happen this time around (rumours suggest that the 680 was actually a lower range card that they added some extra MHz to outperform AMDs best.)).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

SPCR measured HD4000 power consumption and it is consuming more power than the HD6550D:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1259-page3.html

[watercooled]

That t model could be a little bit of a star. It looks as though the process is more beneficial in lower power situations, down to 45w with only a few Mhz taken off the turbo freq.

will build a new system at some point this year, likely that something from the range will end up in it.

Obviously I can't say for sure yet, but based on past experience there's not a lot of point in going for one of the lower TDP models - they all idle about the same because of gating and the normal parts are often equally or even more efficient (i.e. performance/watt) under load - considering they're often more expensive, the only real reason to go for one IMO is if you're physically limited with the amount of power you can draw or amount of heat you can dissipate.

To be fair I think its been the hype surrounding the launch that has caused the disappointment. All the talk of the improvements, and the most noticeable point to take out of the reviews is that they get hot. I wanted IB to match SB but do so at a cooler temperature so that a build would be quiet on air when fully loaded @ about 4.5GHz.
I am now even more interested for a review on the Be Quiet Dark Rock 2 / Pro.

It's greatly attributed to the hype IMO, as I was saying in an earlier post.

(rumours suggest that the 680 was actually a lower range card that they added some extra MHz to outperform AMDs best.)).

They are just that - rumours. There may be a larger die based on the same architecture planned, but it doesn't mean it was ever intended to be released at the same time. If Nvidia could produce this larger die which massively outperforms anything at the same price point as existing AMD cards, why wouldn't they? And there wasn't much of a gap between AMD's release and Nvidia's - it would take a tad longer than that to scrap existing production runs, modify a smaller die and get it from data to silicon. But this is a subject that's been done to death in other threads.

SPCR measured HD4000 power consumption and it is consuming more power than the HD6550D:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1259-page3.html

I noticed Anand left Llano power consumption measurements out of the CPU comparison tables...

[Andi-C]

I'll be missing this one out ! Looking forward to the next Gen...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Production samples have a larger IGP section than the review engineering samples:

http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2...es_Sandys.html

It might to improve yields of the IGP but I wonder if power consumption is also affected - but unless production and engineering samples are tested side by side it will be hard to say.

It seems IB is actually around 183MM2 as opposed to the 216MM2 of SB.

[Butuz]

Core i7-3770T <--- 8 threads and 45 watt TDP.

Wow! That's outstanding.

I can see why you guys may be a bit disappointed with the overclocking and heat results. But for people like me with more desktops than active directory can actually display, that kind of efficiency is a BIG bonus for new purchases.

Looks like I am the only person here that is actually pleased with Ivy Bridge

Butuz

[Terbinator]

Core i7-3770T <--- 8 threads and 45 watt TDP.

Wow! That's outstanding.

I can see why you guys may be a bit disappointed with the overclocking and heat results. But for people like me with more desktops than active directory can actually display, that kind of efficiency is a BIG bonus for new purchases.

Butuz

Just get a standard 3770 - lock the multiplier = profit?

[watercooled]

@Butuz: Check my post 23, first paragraph. The 'energy saving' models generally aren't worth it.

[Butuz]

Agree with you for home use. At home you can just get the K version (generally roughly the same price) and drop the multi and voltage if you want effecient.

In industry though where every watt counts, we don't all want to spend all day under/overclocking / testing stability on our PCs so the pre-under clocked fully tested and warranted intel ones actually are worthwhile.

When you've got a building pulling 600 amps through 600w fuses sometimes and you need to add 100 more PCs the only option to avoid frankly absurd costs of digging up roads etc to upgrade the electric supply to one building/site can be using low TDP CPUs and paying a bit of a premium per CPU still works out vastly cheaper.

Home users don't even need to bat an eyelid at considerations like that. That's why I very much welcome 45w tdp 8 thread CPUs :-)

Butuz

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The lower wattage Core i5 and Core i7 cost more and are not worth the price IMHO(unless you are going for a very small PC) and I have a mini-ITX build which would benefit from such a CPU too.

IIRC,with the Core i3 2100,if you simply dropped the clockspeed to the same as a Core i3 2100T power consumption was very similar.

The thing is the Xeon E3 quad core CPUs make more sense though. For example an 80W TDP Xeon E3-1230 has slightly lower clockspeeds than a 95W TDP Core i7 2600K but has the IGP switched off and yet costs far less - around £175. The E3-1230 V2 has a 69W TDP,runs 200MHZ slower than a Core i7 3770K and lacks an IGP but hopefully will be under £200.

IIRC,configurable TDPs are probably going to be more common as time progresses and Intel and AMD are already starting to do this.

The thing is though that under idle and lower load conditions power consumption between IB and SB is not massively different - however under heavy load IB does better. The issue is how oftern are you going to put your CPU under 100% load rendering and video encoding?? Why don't,for example,more websites test gaming power consumption as many people will buy Core i5 CPUs and only game and do office tasks.

Too many websites don't test power consumption under multiple situations - at least SPCR and Toms Hardware are doing this.

[watercooled]

Yeah I meant unless you have tight power draw limits. The low power versions like I say usually idle within a watt or two of each other, but unless your PC is constantly 24/7 loaded regardless of task completion, you have to look at energy rather than power i.e. a faster CPU will spend less time under load for a given task, so given the same efficiency it would draw the same amount of energy as the 'energy saving' chip. However, it's often the case that these chips are actually less efficient then their full-speed counterparts, so you have to compare carefully before assuming the 'green' model will save you money, as it could be both costing you more money and making you wait longer for tasks to complete. Consider it more of a speed limit for chips.

However, it depends on the silicon; sample variance and bins have to be taken into account, remember the green models will be using the same die as the full-speed chips. Basically, unless you have strict worst-case limits you can't exceed (relying on circuit breakers for the rare occasion every PC in the building is fully loaded would be a better option in many cases), you're best waiting for reviews comparing efficiency, preferably of several samples; I'm basing this on previous chips but IVB and the process it's made on could be most efficient at lower clock speeds.

[Ross1]

I noticed Anand left Llano power consumption measurements out of the CPU comparison tables...

The most illuminating thing recently was his ipad 3 review when he left all the decent tablet screens out of the colour accuracy comparison.....