Upgrade Dilemma: Ivy Bridge Benchies Leaked. Better Than SB, But Should You Upgrade?

VR-ZONE reports on some leaked bencharks posted at obr-hardware.com for the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors, specifically the Core i7-3770K, which has four HyperThreading enabled cores.

The CPU used was a C0 stepping engineering sample with a clock speed of 3.5GHz and 3.9GHz turbo boost (come on Intel, you can hit 4GHz officially!). It was plugged into a Z68 motherboard (brand/model not revealed) which had UEFI firmware to support the new CPU.

There's lots of confusing stats to get your head around in the table, but the takeaway message is that the new CPU improves on the i7-2600K by around 9% overall in single-threaded and heavily multi-threaded tests. Considering the 3% boost in clock speed (i7-2600K runs at 3.4GHz) VR-ZONE then worked out the boost in IPC, taking into account the 100MHz clock speed difference with the i7-2600K, that Ivy Bridge offers a modest 6% boost in IPC. Worth having, but not something to fall over yourself to get one about. Note that none of the benchmarks are retail games, which is the acid test for gaming enthusiasts.

Ivy Bridge is a 'tick' step design, ie a new architecture, which comes with the much improved HD 4000 graphics core and a significantly lower power consumption. With a TDP of just 77W, it's a full 18W down compared to Sandy Bridge and this is something to get excited about. Why? It'll run a lot cooler at stock speed and will fit inside the cramped case a of a laptop a lot more comfortably, as the heat will be easier to dissipate, giving better performance all round. Also, taking into account the new 22nm Tri-Gate transistors that this is made with, the CPU is expected to overclock very well indeed, perhaps even leaving Sandy Bridge in the dust (we'll have to wait for official reviews on this one). Now, this is really something for PC enthusiasts to get excited about! There will even be low power 65W parts sold, intended primarily for laptops, but will likely be available retail for enthusiasts to put in their desktops and HTPCs.

Interestingly, obr-hardware's article has been pulled, because they didn't want to get on the wrong side of Intel., but claimed that this wasn't NDA, which is odd: "Everyone already have seen it, because of good relationship with Intel, taken down ... PS. not NDA signed but ..."
Yeah, me too.

And now to that perennial question for PC enthusiasts: should you upgrade? It's assumed that our hypothetical enthusiast has a high-end graphics card to go with their fast CPU, as the two tend to go together. Well, usually. So, one could argue that if you own a 2600K/2700K, or even an older 2500K (but this has less cache and no HT) you already have a very fast and competent processor, that will play all the latest games with high frame rates and will remain viable for another couple of years or so.

This sort of reasonable argument doesn't tend to wash with enthusiasts, who quite reasonably want the performance improvements that the very latest technology brings, perhaps just because they can. Hence, funds allowing (or the credit card allowing) the answer is a resounding "YES!"

The new Ivy Bridge range will be launched alongside 7-series chipset motherboards including Z77, soon now in week one or two of April. Can't wait.