News - Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell CPU benchmarked and priced

[HEXUS]

Is it worth waiting for?

Read more.

[Pleiades]

Not very exciting tbh, expected more rly...

[Badbonji]

CPU advancements aren't nearly as fast as GPUs, a lot of the performance increase has come from with the introduction of more cores. Definitely not worth upgrading to this from my i7 3770k, it will also need to be as good an overclocker otherwise the performance increases shown here could be minimised if it can't reach the same speed overall.

[CampGareth]

I'll wait and see what reviews say on release but I'm thinking I won't regret buying a couple of new machines with Ivybridge CPUs not long ago.

[scaryjim]

Tom's commits a faux pas by not including numbers for an AMD Trinity-based APU's graphics in the graphs

I think "faux pas" is a bit unfair - they specifically say they're not happy doing cross-company comparisons on engineering hardware with beta drivers (although it's arguable whether Intel's driver ever get better than beta quality... ).

The whole thing is yet again evolutionary rather than revolutionary - a smidge more IPC, a dollop more graphics, nothing ground breaking, and nothing that really shakes up the current market: AMD will continue to have the best desktop IGPs, Intel will continue to have the best desktop CPUs, and which you buy will really depend on your budget and uses. It also gives AMD a chance to claw back some ground when Kaveri launches - the gains from Richland should be bigger than Ivy Bridge -> Haswell and close the ground even more.

The mobile space is where things could get interesting, depending on just how good GT3 really is. It's a shame we don't have any ULV Richland figures yet though: from the look of it the tweaks from Trinity will pay out most for graphics performance in the low power space, which means GT3 may have to be remarkable to make a significant impact (and being BGA/ULV only you'll pay through the nose for a laptop with GT3...)

[MustardCutter]

I wonder if Haswell has soldered heatspreaders like SB and not paste like IB. If they are there could be some serious overclocking. It would need to be to prise anyone away from thier existing i5s and i7s, especially as it's yet another socket change from Intel, mobo manufacturers must love Intel.

[technodean]

Why make such improvement's on the graphics part of the chip when 90% of the people who will or own K series chips have a dedicated GPU. Shouldn't they make the K series chips without onboard GPU thus keeping temps down further and give the user more cache etc. Saving power is good but my HW monitor says my 2600k only uses 7w for normal pc usage and under 60w for gaming. I suppose what isn't mentioned is things like having 6 6gb sata ports or did that not materialize. Personally for me to upgrade and see a good increase in performance I will have to wait for another 3 -5 generations on.

[crossy]

Unfortunately, there are no numbers for power consumption, which would be interesting to see, and we have to take the performance of any pre-production chip, using beta drivers, on a new motherboard, with a large pinch of salt.

That's my problem too - I'm looking for a replacement for my current PhenomII, and was hoping Haswell would give me better performance at a less than 100W TDP.

But the biggest generation-to-generation improvements are to be found in the performance of the chips' on-board 'GT2' graphics.

Now here's where my AMD-cpu-loyalty is a drawback. I was under the impression that the i7 is a "performance" processor, in which case is there anyone planning to use that on-board graphics as anything other than a stopgap until they can get something "proper" from AMD or NVidia? Seems a bit daft - to me at least - to get an 8 thread powerhouse processor and then not partner it up with a decent graphics card.

[MustardCutter]

Why make such improvement's on the graphics part of the chip when 90% of the people who will or own K series chips have a dedicated GPU. Shouldn't they make the K series chips without onboard GPU thus keeping temps down further and give the user more cache etc. Saving power is good but my HW monitor says my 2600k only uses 7w for normal pc usage and under 60w for gaming. I suppose what isn't mentioned is things like having 6 6gb sata ports or did that not materialize. Personally for me to upgrade and see a good increase in performance I will have to wait for another 3 -5 generations on.

Yeah, intels on-chip graphics only seem relevant to the i3s, laptops and perhaps non-k i5s and i7sto me, though there will be exceptions. Which is odd cause those tend to have the worst graphics. If I remember correctly there have been k-series I5's with the GPU portion disabled but I think they costed more (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

[MrJim]

That's my problem too - I'm looking for a replacement for my current PhenomII, and was hoping Haswell would give me better performance at a less than 100W TDP.

I would say better performance than Phenom II at less than 100W is pretty much guaranteed. Haswell is the second gen 22nm processor from Intel, & with Ivybridge processors coming in at 77W TDP, I doubt Haswell will be much higher, even with the more powerful integrated GPU.

I was under the impression that the i7 is a "performance" processor, in which case is there anyone planning to use that on-board graphics as anything other than a stopgap until they can get something "proper" from AMD or NVidia? Seems a bit daft - to me at least - to get an 8 thread powerhouse processor and then not partner it up with a decent graphics card.

No doubt Quicksync will benefit from the improved iGPU on Haswell, which is definitely useful for anyone who does a lot of video encoding...

[Platinum]

GT3 Graphics are going to be the big thing this time around, Nvidia should be quite worried about it I think it could take a lot of business from them in the mobile space.

[kompukare]

I wonder if we're going to get proper reviews of Haswell GT3 laptop performance? Seeing how most sites just tip-toed around the issue of Titan's thermal performance I would guess not. If Nvidia largely got their way with Titan reviews, what chance of honest real reviews of Intel's CPU in thermally constrained settings?

While neither are being totally upfront and honest, ATM it seems that AMD's mobile APUs are more predictable in their behaviour than Intels. Certainly Intel's ULV parts seem to behave and perform totally differently when both the CPU and the GPU is stressed.

Doubt that Intel will use solder for the desktop parts (mobiles are bare die anyway). Not unless they felt under pressure in the high-end (well really mid-end since LGA2011 is high) market. Still it will be interesting to see what the rumoured return of BLCK overclocking might bring: guess value Haswell Pentium and Celeron overclocking will not be allowed or impressive somehow.

What really needs to happen with onboard GPU (if for no other reason so we don't have to hear the constant complaints from i7 K owners...) is for the iGPU to be used to offload either after render AA effect or physics. Physics makes the most sense but who would do it?Intel do own Havok but since they don't have a good reason to support games with dGPUs. Nvidia own Physix and want to keep it proprietary to their cards (and anyhow don't make any CPUs). AMD don't own any physics engine but might be partial to an OpenCL physics engine. I know AMD might like to push hybrid crossfire with their APUs but for that to work well would require devoting lots of resources for the drivers. Just consider this: say ten models of Trinity plus about ten Radeon dGPU cards is already one hundred variants. And with Trinity, Richland, and Temash they're going to have a lot more than ten variants. Good luck making that work well.

[kingpotnoodle]

CPU performance is evolutionary rather than revolutionary but then that's what you'd expect from a tweaked die shrink, 10% more from a few little tweaks seems pretty good to me and lets face it the FX8350 is AMD's best and falls behind a 3770K in nearly every benchmark, anyone who is more interested in outright performance than price or perf/$ is already an Intel customer and that's not changing.

Comparing this to an AMD A10 APU that's a 3rd of the price is a little unfair on both, the type of machine their aimed to get used in is totally different. The A10 is a value proposition based on CPU being "good enough" and having decent graphics without discrete cards whereas not a lot of point on a chip like the 4770K having more than the standard graphics (for desktop if you have switchable graphics and for Quicksysnc) as 99% of 4770K buyers will also have discrete graphics for the hard work. Compare CPUs that have a similar place in the range or price, some sort of equivalence at least.

I do hope some of the lower ranked CPU parts on desktop come with beefier graphics as they'll probably slip nicely into ITX boxes. Its the lower end, low power parts etc that we'll probably see the most interesting Haswell releases.

[Tunnah]

Am I the only one who is glad that it's not much of an improvement?

Now I don't feel such a strong need to do a pointless upgrade...I was planning on upgrading my i5 2500k but because chips nowadays are so powerful and the gains from new ones aren't that massive, it means I wouldn't really notice an upgrade as much as I would in the olden days so it's easier to stop myself getting it

[KrisWragg]

Going to stick to my 2500k overclocked to 4.5Ghz. Seems to perform fine with everything I can currently throw at it.

[devBunny]

Now here's where my AMD-cpu-loyalty is a drawback. I was under the impression that the i7 is a "performance" processor, in which case is there anyone planning to use that on-board graphics as anything other than a stopgap until they can get something "proper" from AMD or NVidia? Seems a bit daft - to me at least - to get an 8 thread powerhouse processor and then not partner it up with a decent graphics card.

Is there anyone? Of course. Anyone who wants power and doesn't need gaming graphics. I have a 3930 for the former and had to buy a pair of graphics cards for the spread of monitors. A 4770 will give you almost as much power and obviate the need for graphics cards, saving both money and expansion slots.

It's not all about gaming. I've lost count of how many times that needs to be said. ;o)

Mind you, if, as a non-gamer, the software that you use were geared towards GP computing then you might still bemoan what would then be the waste that is onboard graphics. :-)