Ivy Bridge is here but if you have a Sandy Bridge system the upgrade isn't worth it

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Pe-Killer

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http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/04/23/intel-core-i7-3770k-review/9

Conclusion
Intel is in the enviable position of having the enthusiast CPU market all to itself right now. AMD’s competition is increasingly focused on the fusion of GPU and CPU, but this has come at the cost of raw CPU performance. For those who use a dedicated graphics card there’s only been one choice for months, and Ivy Bridge only underlines this.

Minor performance improvements across the board in comparison to the previous generation of Sandy Bridge processors, a drop in power consumption and a like-for-like price make Ivy Bridge, without doubt, a worthwhile replacement, albeit not an earth-shattering one. If you opted for a Sandy Bridge CPU and its P67 or Z68 platform in the last year, there’s little reason to regret your purchase (unless you play lots of Shogun 2) and as such, no real reason to upgrade, especially if you’ve overclocked your CPU.

However, for new-builds and for those who skipped the Sandy Bridge last year it’s a simple choice: the i7-3770K is far, far quicker than an Intel Core i7-920 or any other preceding quad-core chip. It's also an absolute doddle to overclock to 4.4GHz and beyond. A decent Z77 motherboard requires you to literally only adjust the Vcore and multiplier to achieve stable overclocks. So long as you’ve got a cooler to keep up, clock speeds of 4.8GHz on air are perfectly achievable.

However, as you’ll no doubt have spotted throughout our performance graphs, the £160 i5-3570K is never far behind, and overclocks just as well (and in our case, better) than the i7-3770K. Here we see a case of history repeating itself: while the i7-3770K is faster at stock, the i5-3750K is far better value, and unless you’re making extensive use of applications that can take advantage of Hyper-threading such as rendering or video encoding, the i5-3750K is the better choice.

It’s the same dilemma that i7-2600K/i5-2500K buyers faced, and frankly, neither is wrong. Both represent a small, but meaningful step forward for Intel, and unless you require the brute power of the much more expensive X79 platform, offer all the performance you could need.
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Im still rocking a C2Q Q9400 so I will be getting a 3570K as soon as possible.

Apparently the suppliers have chips, they just can't sell them until the 29th
 
Guesstimate on the price of a Z77 mobo and an i5-3750K? Same as sandybridge?
 
So, pretty much as expected then, no massive revolution this time around. Not that I would have upgraded anyway if it was, my 2600K is still insanely fast at 4.4GHz.
 
I think its the extreme 4 at Rebeltech. Its a very good motherboard but I went with the Gigabyte z77x-ud3h with the wifi add on

Still not 100% sure on Asrock just yet even though I hear they are reliable. Can never go wrong with Gigabyte
 
Reaper84 said:
I think its the extreme 4 at Rebeltech. Its a very good motherboard but I went with the Gigabyte z77x-ud3h with the wifi add on

Still not 100% sure on Asrock just yet even though I hear they are reliable. Can never go wrong with Gigabyte
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+1 Gigabyte Or Asus.
 
If you a gamer rather upgrade your graphics card if you have sandy bridge. I can still play most games on full graphics and if I get a gtx 680 I will be able to run every game at full again
 
nelis said:
If you a gamer rather upgrade your graphics card if you have sandy bridge. I can still play most games on full graphics and if I get a gtx 680 I will be able to run every game at full again
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+1 But if you coming from s775 like me then its a major upgrade. Just can't decide if I'm going 3770K or 3570K?
 
Reaper84 said:
+1 But if you coming from s775 like me then its a major upgrade. Just can't decide if I'm going 3770K or 3570K?
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Do you do lots of rendering, heavy photoshop, etc? Then you want the 3770k
Do you spend 90% of more of your time gaming? Then you want the 3570k
 
I think someone would really need a specific reason to make use of all that processing power.
I cannot imagine why I'd need a better chip than my 2500K for gaming, browsing etc. on my Desktop at home, in fact, I could easily be accused of not using it to its full potential even though I'm permanently glued to it when I'm at home.

I think the 22Nm thing will definitely be cool for Notebooks though, then again, my older i7 720QM Notebook chip is also more than enough for running all my development apps etc. and not a day goes by that I haven't been impressed by this machine (2 years and counting now).
Could do with some better battery life though.

Back in the days there was a huge difference between say, a PII 300Mhz and the 500Mhz for instance (or 133Mhz vs. 233Mhz if you really want to go old school :D).
But these days it just seems to make more sense to focus on stuff like I/O (SATA2 vs. SATA3, SSD, GPU etc.). It's easy to skip like two or three generations of CPU's now and still have a machine that's a screamer.
 
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According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155 it says that H61 chipsets support Ivy Bridge. Does that mean you can take any mobo with H61 and put in an Ivy Bridge?

Also, what cooler would you guys say is very good for overclocking on air with an i5?

And lastly, do different chipsets influence the speed of the CPU? ie. will the CPU alone run faster on a p67 or z68 than on a h61?
 
I actually expected the Ivy Bridge CPU's (with the tri-gate transistors) to be much more efficient in terms of power consumption.

I have to say that there is a massive power consumption difference between running an i7 3770k @ 4.8GHz vs i7 920 @ 4GHz, but I'll have to leave on my i7 940 @ 3.8GHz at full load, 24/7 for a few months before the saving on the electricity bill would make it worth while to upgrade...

One cool thing about the Ivy Bridge is that we now can recommend slightly cheaper power supplies for the heavy overclockers...

@stevovo:
WIth an H61 chipset you won't be able to overclock the CPU.
 
Reaper84 said:
I think the 3570K will be the one then. What about the 3570K vs 2600K. Which is better
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I would personally lean to the new chip, its higher IPC will give it the lead in most games

marine1 said:
Does the ASUS P8Z68V_PROGEN3 have IVY support?
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Best is to check the supported CPU list for your board, which does not show it (yet). I'm sure it will be added soon, Asus is usually good with new chips. Be sure to update your bios before you get the new chip!

stevovo said:
Also, what cooler would you guys say is very good for overclocking on air with an i5?

And lastly, do different chipsets influence the speed of the CPU? ie. will the CPU alone run faster on a p67 or z68 than on a h61?
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From the little we've seen, any half decent air cooler will be fine. Cogage True Spirit is always a good choice, and cheap to boot. Chipsets will not affect stock speeds, but overclocking it can. H61 can not be overclocked, whereas P67 and Z68 can be
 
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