Intel Officially Lifts the Veil On Ivy Bridge

New submitter zackmerles writes "Tom's Hardware takes the newly-released, top-of-the-line Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K for a spin. All Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPUs come with Intel HD Graphics 4000, which despite the DirectX 11 support, only provides a modest boost to the Sandy Bridge Intel HD Graphics 3000. However, the new architecture tops the charts for low power consumption, which should make the Ivy Bridge mobile offerings more desirable. In CPU performance, the new Ivy Bridge Core i7 is only marginally better than last generation's Core i7-2700K. Essentially, Ivy Bridge is not the fantastic follow-up to Sandy Bridge that many enthusiasts had hoped for, but an incremental improvement. In the end, those desktop users who decided to skip Sandy Bridge to hold out for Ivy Bridge, probably shouldn't have. On the other hand, since Intel priced the new Core i7-3770K and Core i5-3570K the same as their Sandy Bridge counterparts, there is no reason to purchase the previous generation chips." Reader jjslash points out that coverage is available from all the usual suspects — pick your favorite: AnandTech, TechSpot, Hot Hardware, ExtremeTech, and Overclockers.

Let me get this straight...

[girlintraining]

So, Intel, a company with no real competition right now in the market, has produced a product that offers only a very slight performance boost, and relied on tons of marketing to drum up anticipation for this mediocre offering. And then priced it the same as existing offerings as an apology to those who waited. Actually, that sounds about par for the course these days. The only real news in cpus and motherboards has been that they've gone multicore and continue to increase bandwidth. And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[timeOday]

A 50% GPU improvement [anandtech.com] over Sandy Bridge is VERY significant.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[0123456]

A 50% GPU improvement [anandtech.com] over Sandy Bridge is VERY significant.

Not particularly. A 50% faster GPU will still suck for gamers and will be irrelevant to non-gamers.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[devman]

Where is the (-5 Wrong) moderation when you need it. You can verify that Ivy Bridge is, in fact, a tick by looking at any of the linked reviews, Intel's own marketing, or wikipedia.

Hopefully meta mods are paying attention to this one.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Jeremi]

And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.

Is it really because they can't squeeze out more performance, or is it because decreased energy consumption is primarily what consumers are demanding these days?

I can't remember the last time I heard anyone complaining about their CPU being too slow (barring software problems), but people still wish their laptop/tablet had longer battery life.