Ivy Bridge Running Hotter Than Intel's Last-gen CPU

crookedvulture writes "The launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs made headlines earlier this week, but the next-gen processor's story is still being told. When overclocked, Ivy Bridge runs as much as 20C hotter than its Sandy Bridge predecessor at the same speed, despite the fact that the two chips have comparable power consumption. There are several reasons for these toasty tendencies. The new 22-nm process used to fabricate the CPU produces a smaller die with less surface area to dissipate heat. Intel has changed the thermal interface material between the CPU die and its heat spreader. Ivy also requires a much bigger step up in voltage to hit the same speeds as Sandy Bridge."

3d tri-gate not as good as promised

[edxwelch]

Remember a year ago Intel was bragging about their new 3d tri-gate process would be 50% more power efficient: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/standards-22nm-3d-tri-gate-transistors-presentation.html [intel.com].
Comparing the i7 3770K against the 2600K, which is clocked at the same frequency it's only 17% more power efficient: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/20 [anandtech.com]
Also you have to bare in mind some of the power saving is due to the DDR controller power gating

You're slipping, intel.

[game kid]

So lemme see here...Intel's new CPU dies are now smaller (good), which makes them less dissipative of heat (bad), so they decide to use worse thermal paste stuff?

Seems legit.

Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat

[tommasorepetti]

Completely agree. The overclocking community is somewhat overrepresented in reviews of computer hardware. Overclockers are, in general, very knowledgable, so I am not saying that their voices as part of the reception are a problem--it is, after all, often overclockers who push the limits of current generation architectures and empower consumers. It is important to note, however, that thermal issues when overclocked are secondary to efficiency and power consumption for well over 99% of all computing applications. I work in HPC and obviously care about eeking out performance from my platforms, but I have never overclocked a CPU. A modest performance increase is completely secondary to jeopardizing the reliability of a computer system. As far as I am concerned, this particular critique is irrelevant, and I think that many other lay people and professionals would feel the same way. I am much more interested in knowing if the logevity of the new chips is commensurate with that of the previous generation.

Re:notice the "when overclocked" caveat

[Anthony Mouse]

This is true as far as it goes, but the behavior when overclocked is telling for more than how well you can overclock: At the risk of stating the obvious, the chips the overclockers are having heat issues with are the ones Intel is manufacturing. That means Intel isn't going to be able to ramp the clock speed very easily for the same reasons that the overclockers are running into trouble, unless there is some significant and avoidable flaw in the chip or the process that they can remove in future revisions.

On the plus side, this gives AMD a little breathing room to try to catch up a little.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a better one: I helped set up a college computer lab, but it was really just a terminal lab for the old 3270 green screen CRT's to an IBM "mainframe" I administered ("Systems Programmer" in IBM parlance). My doofus manager somehow spec'ed the AC request so strong that on warm humid days in sunny southside Virginia, when the door was open to the hallway, just inside from the outside door, the humidity would condense on any CRT's that were not turned on, and short them out if they were turned on while still wet. We lost several before catching on.