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The Ivy Bridge Preview: Core i7 3770K Testedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/6/2012 8:16 PM EST
- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i7
- Ivy Bridge
195 Comments
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sabot00 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkHow long will Intel keep its HD Graphics increases? Reply
MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI don't understand the logic of selling a high end CPU with the best IGP. Seems like anyone running an it isn't going to stick with the IGP for games, and if they aren't gaming, then what good is that high-end GPU? Maybe the entire "Core i" line should use the HD 4000. Reply
Flunk - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkBecause the low end chips are just die-harvested high end chips it makes sense. No reason to disable it so they leave it on.
And some people do actually use high end processors with IGPs. It's fairly easy to get one from a major OEM. It's stupid but most people don't know any better. Reply
aahkam - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - linkFunny comments I saw.
What's wrong even if the High End CPU that comes with IGP?
Is High End CPU = Gaming Machine CPU? If that is your logic, you're a rich but shallow boy!
I do lots of Video Editing and Transcoding, I need High End CPU but None of the High End GPU beats Quick Sync in Transcoding in terms of Quality and Speed. Reply
dqniel - Friday, April 06, 2012 - link"and if they aren't gaming, then what good is that high-end GPU?"
I feel like you missed that part. He's not saying that only gamers use high-end CPUs. He's saying that gamers using a high-end CPU won't care about the high-end iGPU because they won't use it. Also, non-gamers who need a high-end CPU generally won't see the benefits of the included high-end iGPU. So, he proposes that the better niche for the high-end iGPU would be on the more affordable CPUs, because then budget-minded gamers could buy an affordable CPU that has a relatively powerful iGPU integrated into it. Reply
defter - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThis is a mid-range CPU, not high-end one.
High desktop CPUs (i7 3800-3900) don't have IGP. Reply
KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIt is because laptops continue to get slimmer and slimmer. Getting good GPU performance without the compromises on the chassis that a dedicated GPU would force is the point. Reply
Tormeh - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThis.
My next laptop will have processor graphics for the sake of battery life and size, and whoever has the best graphics gets my money. Reply
bznotins - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkSeconded. Reply
aguilpa1 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIf the 4000HD is on the level of lets say a 560m I would not hesitate to get a laptop with no dedicated graphics but if it isn't I'm still going to go for the dedicated. Reply
niva - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI think it's a long time away from approaching 560m performance. If you're going to do any remotely serious gaming on a laptop it's still best to get a dedicated graphics card.
I'm still sticking to gaming on a tower, so these CPUs (esp the AMD llano) make sense for me in laptops. Don't ever see myself gaming on a laptop unless I completely get rid of the towers in my house... which won't happen anytime soon (if ever.) Reply
pepperoni - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI felt the same way when I was shopping recently. I WANTED to buy a Llano-based notebook (inexpensive, better graphics vs. Intel). The problem is there's no such thing as a slim and light Llano. Every OEM sticks you with the same configuration: six pounds and 15.6" turd-768 resolution screen. It's bizarre.
For the sake of competition, I hope Trinity will get some better design wins. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - linkIf you look at the gaming charts, the resolution may go past x768, but the settings are on LOW, and don't give us a minimum frame rate, so the answer is:
That's all that llano can handle is low end low rez.
So AMD forces the giant .lb weighted monster as a selling point. Reply
poached - Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - linkso AMD? Reply
Demon-Xanth - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI agree with you there. To get those "$100 mid range GPUs" on a laptop you need to bump up the cost by around $400 to get to one that simply can have one. Most laptops currently do not have discrete GPUs.
I am glad to see that integrated graphics from both Intel and AMD can now be compared with low end cards like the GT520 and GT440 without it becoming a laugh. Also that they are actually completing the tests well now. That is a rather major step. I remember some reviews of integrated graphics that resulted in a lot of either "could not complete" or "the bar is too small to fit a number on" entries. Reply
Azethoth - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThe IGP provides the QuickSync implementation. It would be insane to not include the silicon for it on the high end system. In addition moving forward you can get compute work out of the GPU so why would you ever not include it. Reply
danjw - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkQuicksync the Intel video transcoding feature is based in the GPU. This is important to a lot of users. Reply
sweetspot - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkWell also these make for nice office machines. So businesses upgrading there desktop workstations.
When you have thousands of employees, the desktop refresh, these are decent option, since they are not gaming at work ( right lol ). Reply
Taft12 - Sunday, March 18, 2012 - linkHardly any large corporations buy desktops anymore. Maybe for the call centre employees, that's about it. Reply
AFUMCBill - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkBecause gaming isn't the only thing that uses graphics cards. For instance, more and more video editors use the graphics card for doing video decode/encode/applying effects. So having a high performance graphics engine to go along with the high performance CPU can be a really nice thing. Reply
Mithan - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkMost gamers don't spend money on the I7 lineup, prefering to buy the Core i5 series and invest the extra money into more GPU. Reply
just4U - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkIt's not only the extra money.. Apparently the 2500K does better in a fair number of games over the 2600K (in part.. i think due to Hyper Threading) and the graphs seem to support that (altho maybe not for the reason I mentioned)
Looking at the 3700 series though it beats out both the 2500K and 2600K so I think that one is going to be of special interest to gamers.. moving forward. Reply
auvrea - Monday, November 19, 2012 - linkbump Reply
nuha_te10 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI'm afraid the next Haswell will be Tock- Reply
Arnulf - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkWhy ?
If the statement "the significant gains we're seeing here with Ivy will pale in comparison to what Haswell provides" is true then I'm looking forward to Haswell very much. I'll finally be able to dump discrete GPU as I only use relatively mdoest dislay resolutions, and instead pour the money into even quieter cooling solution. Silence, sweet silence :) Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkNice to see AMD winning where it actually matters for most consumer applications. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkBrowsing? Reply
Fujikoma - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkYou crack me up... that was truly a funny response.
Seriously though, Llano isn't that bad for a generic/cheap build. I did pick one up to build a machine for my mom. The mobo and the proc. were justified by the price. I knew it wouldn't be powerful, but it's fairly energy efficient, has decent graphics and the money I saved went toward the ssd. Most people I build/fix computers for, don't come close to using them to their potential, so price becomes the biggest factor. Would I buy one for myself? No, I'll stick with the i7 I currently have and when I build my next machine, it looks like it'll be an Intel also. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThanks. :)
I quite agree, Llano is awesome for what it does and provides an excellent platform for most users.
I'm just tired of the assumption that GPU grunt is more powerful than CPU.
It's true that most of my friends and family would be perfectly happy with the GPU muscle in a Llano chip. That said, they'd also be perfectly happy with the iGPU in something like a i3 2100.
As for myself I'm using an i7 2600K, running at stock, but then I have somewhat different requirements.
I'd not hesitate to recommend either Llano or Intel chips with iGPU solutions, it all depends on the person really. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link...'GPU grunt is more important that CPU'... would probably read better, looking back.
Ah well, you get the point I'm sure. Reply
retrospooty - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link"Nice to see AMD winning where it actually matters for most consumer applications."
I dont see how you can look at these (or any) benchmark and call it a win for AMD. Intel is smoking them. A few useless integrated graphics benchmarks and you call it a win? Hey, I hear RIM is looking for a new PR rep, they could really use a guy like you. ;) Reply
juampavalverde - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkIGP performance is nice, but no comments about the subjective quality, i have seen side to side HD Graphics 2000 vs Radeon IGP and the graphics quality was night and day, with the radeon being the day...
I dont know whats needed to do properly integrated graphics, but seems intel still lacks... Reply
nuha_te10 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkYes,people standard are different. For gamer intel IGP might suck, but it's more than enough for me.If I buy Llano, the graphic core might be just a wasted silicon because I don't really do gaming.Buy 1 if you only need 1 Reply
lowenz - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkOK, DirectCompute is supported by the GPU: we see the fluid benchmark in review.
But GPU is OpenCL 1.1/1.2 compliant? Reply
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkYou mentioned in your intro about the Intel-Apple exclusivity agreement being up and Apple constantly pushing Intel for better GPU performance. Do you think Ivy Bridge has made sufficient gains in GPU performance to keep Apple on board? Have you had a chance to test Ivy Bridge's IGP OpenCL performance since that seems like a particular area of interest for Apple? Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI think its sure that they will. They chose a weaker CPU in favour of a stronger IGP (9400 and Core 2 Duo) before, but now we're at a point where the HD4000 would be more than adequate for Mountain Lion and probably onwards, plus Intel is way ahead with 22nm and the resulting power draw as well as CPU performance, and I think Apple uses Quicksync for Airplay which is Intel-only. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIt really depends on your workload.
Personally I need CPU grunt far more than GPU grunt, which I suppose means I wouldn't even strictly need the 4K class GPU.
But it's 'free' so I'll take it. :) Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkThe top end models which would probably be paired with a discreet card get decent integrated graphics, while the low end ones which will probably be standalone get cut down IGPs. Odd. If anything I think on the top end people would want models with less space used on integrated graphics with that headroom used for higher clocks or lower prices, even the cut down IGPs can do Quicksync.
Also a suggestion for the full review, we know pretty much to expect from the HD4000 performance wise, but what about image quality? AMD and Nvidia improved things generation after generation, and I doubt Intel got it right with their first or second serious foray into lower-midrange graphics. Reply
lowenz - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkApple?
If IGP supports OpenCL as well as DirectCompute there's no more reason for a AMD APU for pro users not gamers. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkSeriously, this is too much, its fine that you have an opinion and I might not have a problem with it if you posted it once, but you post the same damn thing on every article whether its related or not and usually multiple times, someone just please do us all a favour and ban this guy and delete his comments? Reply
jjj - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkCPU perf pretty much as expected,GPU perf somewhat dissapointing ,i thought they'll at least aim to match Llano but i guess it is ok for 1MP laptops screens if mobile parts perform close enough (and a couple of big ifs when it comes to image quality and drivers).
Any opinions yet about QuickSync encoding quality? Reply
wifiwolf - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkAnd we should remark that's comparing 2600 with 3700 which have different cpu too.
Other benchmarks had significantly better results on 3700 than 2600.
So Anand, how you know that difference is not attributable to the CPU and not to some gpu improvement? Reply
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkYou are not being serious, are you? The CPU gets 10% in CPU sensitive benchmarks and GPU gained 40-60%. Even taking out 10%, its still 30-50%, which btw isn't true as games aren't very sensitive to CPU changes as applications do. Reply
wifiwolf - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkLook at crisys or metro benchmarks and tell me where you find that improvement, at least more than what you find in cpu difference. Reply
mosu - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI've tried it on some HD clips at a local TV station and on a big screen it really sucked.It's way behind AMD.We used aHP EliteBook 8460P laptop. Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkAt least AMD's products are HD capable. Reply
dr/owned - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkMy 5 year old laptop with a shared ram gpu is "HD capable". GTFO noob. Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkBillions in R&D, double the MSRP, half the power and yet it still can't play Crysis better than Llano, which will be replaced by Trinity in a few weeks. What a crying shame. Reply
travbrad - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - linkNot playing Crysis sounds like a good thing to me. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkSource or gtfo. Apple got the stock HD 3000, why would this be different? Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThankfully the comments of a certain troll were removed so mine no longer makes sense, for any future readers. Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkJust like how overclocking a Pentium 4 resulted in it beating an Athlon 64 and had lower power consumption to boot-- oh wait. Reply
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkThat's a stupid comment only a stupid fanboy would make AMD is way ahead of Intel in the graphics department and is very competitive with Intel in the mobile segment now. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkYour comments would do nothing to inform regular readers of sites like this, we already know more. So please, can it. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkNot what I asked little troll. Give a source that says Apple will get a special HD4000 like no other. Reply
Operandi - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkWhat are you talking about? As long as AMD has a better iGPU there is plenty of reason for them to be viable choice today. And if gaming iGPU performance holds on against Intel there is more than just hope of them getting back in the game in terms of high performance comput tomorrow. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI'm pretty sure even 16x AF has a sub 2% performance hit on even the lowest end of todays GPUs, is it different with the HD Graphics? If not, why not just enable it like most people would, even on something like a 4670 I max out AF without thinking twice about it, AA still hurts performance though. Reply
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkAF has greater performance impact on low end GPUs. Typically its about 10-15%. It's less on the HD Graphics 3000, only because their 16x AF really only works at much lower levels. It's akin to having option for 1280x1024 resolution, but performing like 1024x768 because it looks like the latter.
If Ivy Bridge improved AF quality to be on par with AMD/Nvidia, performance loss should be similar as well. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkHmm I did not know that, what component of the GPU is involved in that performance hit (shaders, ROPs, etc)? My card is fairly low end and 16x AF performs nearly no different than 0x. Reply
Exophase - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAF requires more samples in cases of high anisotropy so I guess the TMU load increases, which may also increase bandwidth requirements since it could force higher LOD in these cases. You'll only see a performance difference if the AF causes the scene to be TMU/bandwidth limited instead of say, ALU limited. I'd expect this to happen more as you move up in performance, not down, since ALU:TEX ratio tends to go up along the higher end.. but APUs can be more bandwidth sensitive and I think Intel's IGPs never had a lot of TMUs.
Of course it's also very scene dependent. And maybe an inferior AF implementation could end up sampling more than a better one. Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkExcept the quality is the same as competing AMD products if not worse because of driver issues, but you lose 20-30% performance in every scenario versus the last gen Llano APU. The facts are in this very review. Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkSure sounds like Bulldozer at this point, doesn't it?
""It's just a driver issue, AMD/Intel will fix it!"
"It's just the review units sent out, AMD/Intel will have a BIOS update at the official release that improves performance!"
"If you overclock it to hell and back, it can almost sort of maybe compete with Intel/AMD!"
"Oh look, there's a new update out that improves performance! Sure it's only 1% performance, applicable in only certain scenarios, but it's better than nothing!" Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkAside from that NOT being what I said at all... you do realize you justified the reasoning in your post, right? They're bribing Intel. That doesn't mean they did nothing wrong, it's a BRIBE. Besides, Intel is just as guilty as Microsoft of OEM threatening and hand-holding in the 90s. Reply
Makaveli - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkWho the hell is this Sans2212 troll.
Dude please do all of us a favour on this site and STFU.
90% of the people reading this site know more than you.
Take your bad english GTFO.
+1 for ban! Reply
Articuno - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkIf you Google his handle you'll find out he's been doing this for a while now (and that he's probably Japanese, which would explain the poor English).
+2 for ban. Reply
m.amitava - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI don't think he's serious....reading come of his comments...nobody with a human brain can reason like that...
If he IS serious, opens up the possbility of creating an online zoo exhibit out of him...prod him with an AMD logo and he'll roar, shout, roll and snap :) Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkPoes law in full swing. The morons are indistinguishable from the people trying to look like them. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAwww I missed it... I usually like reading his rants, especially his obsession with "amd craps". He filled the void SiliconDoc vacated. Reply
Jamahl - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkWake me up when intel does something interesting again. Reply
MJG79 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - link2009 - $35B in revenue
2010 - $44B (1st $40B year)
2011 - $54B (1st $50B year)
$20B revenue growth in 2 years
You wake me up when there is competition again. Reply
rpsgc - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAll that revenue, all that profit and yet, they STILL can't bet AMD in integrated graphics.
I think that qualifies as a fail.
Thanks for (kind of) proving his point? Reply
dagamer34 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkThey don't really care to. The point of a business is to make money, not have the best products. The latter only gets solved when AMD gets serious in competing with Intel on power/performance again. Reply
Operandi - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkThe internet called,"stop wasting my bits". Reply
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkYou know what? All you do is bash AMD.
If you think AMD sucks THAT much and it's engineers and everything else is incredibly bad...
Then I have a challenge.
Go build your own Processor or GTFO with the bashing. Reply
bennyg - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkDo not feed the troll. Reply
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkExcept... Intels IGP drivers on Windows are bad already. They are allot worst on the Mac.
Historically Intel has never supported it's IGP's to *any* great length and even had to throw up a compatibility list for it's IGP's so you know what games they could potentially run.
Here is a good example:
Heck I recall it taking Intel a good 12 months just to enable TnL and Shader Model 3 on the x3100 chips.
Historically the support has just not been there. Reply
earthrace57 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkAMD's CPUs are going to die...sucks to be an AMD fanboy. However, whatever they are doing with their dedicated GPUs, they are doing something right...if they can manage to pull their act together on the driver side, I think AMD would live as a GPU company... Reply
earthrace57 - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI'm sorry, but Llano APUs will stay on top for quite a while; Intel is still at heart a CPU, Llano is part GPU...if AMD can get drivers the quality of nVidias, they will most likely do extremely well on that front. Reply
zshift - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkI really enjoyed the added compilation benchmark. This site has the most comprehensive collection of benchmarks that I've seen, it's a one-stop shop for most of my reviews. Keep up the great work! Reply
Jamahl - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkWould be great to see power benchmarks of the IGP, especially vs Llano and the HD 3000. Let's see if the graphics improvements have come at the price of yet more power consumption or if intel has managed to keep that down. Reply
Bateluer - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkUntil AMD goes out of business. Then Intel gets lazy again, and the price of even a mid range CPU creeps back up above 600 dollars. You might be too young to remember the 500 dollar price tags on the first gen P3s, when Intel had no effective competition from AMD.
Its not in the consumer's best interests for AMD to die off.
And, FYI, their GPUs are top notch and excellent, across the entire market. Downside is, they're basically carrying the company right now and that's not sustainable. Reply
m.amitava - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkThis sans guy is hilarious!!
Lets prod him a bit more and really get his fanboi juices flowing :)
AMD is the best!!!!! yaaay....Intel sucks they'll go out of business sometime next week :D Reply
Azeraph - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkit doesn't really matter if the igp isn't that great most people don't buy them for their graphics power.I get the feeling that maybe intel is just putting them out there to keep it's base solid against AMD,Not that it needs it and i'm an amd fan. i found something the other day that will possibly change how tomorrows processors will use light instead of electricity.
http://scitechdaily.com/penn-researchers-build-a-c... Reply
m.amitava - Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - linkain't he cute ? :)...I hope he's not a bot...that would break my heart Reply
Galvin - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkPlease Reply
mattgmann - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkit would be cool to see a 4ghz clocked nehalem shuffled in the mix. I'm sure I'm not the only one rocking an i7 9xx wondering how much actual productivity gains are to be had with the new tech. I personally don't like to upgrade until the new gen's retail performance out-does my previous overclocked performance by a solid 15%. Reply
svata - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIs the bug with true 23.976 fps playback fixed?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridg... Reply
sicofante - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI understand that will be part of the new chipsets which haven't been tested here, but I'm also very interested. As a matter of fact, I have a few HTPC customers waiting for Ivy Bridge for this sole reason. Reply
vlado08 - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkI don't find the silence about 23.976 fps playback very promising. This is new chipset "Keep in mind that this is a preview using early drivers and an early Z77 motherboard" .... "Intel Z77 Chipset Based Motherboard"
I find three possibilities:
1. They are not going to fix it with Ivy bridge.
2. They are not ready with the drivers.
3. They are ready and everything is fine but keeping silen becoause they need to sell old chips.
It didn't left much. We'll see. Reply
Assimilator87 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIntel's always the best, EXCEPT WHEN THEY'RE NOT! Athlon 64. Since AMD's sticking with Bulldozer's base architecture for at least a couple generations, they won't be competitive for a while, but that doesn't mean they'll never be competitive. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAt the very least, AMD need a less power hungry successor to Bulldozer. From the Xeon review, it's mentioned that they should be in a position to do this, and could at least clock the thing a lot higher and still use less power than Bulldozer. Regardless, that IPC deficit is a killer - the following page is so telling of the architecture's current limitations:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-r... Reply
abianand2 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link1. General curiosity: You stated you did not get a sanction or support from Intel for this preview. I believed that sort of a thing isn't allowed before the release date. How do exceptions like this work?
2. Specific: I observed most of the discrete GPU tests were at 1680x1050, where there . Any reason for this? I guess it is since this is just a preview. Am I right? Any other reason?
Thanks Reply
Kjella - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link1. If you want to officially review the chip, you sign an NDA and Intel provides you with it. Here he got access to it from a partner, who probably broke their agreements but Anand never signed any agreement so he can publish whatever he wants.
2. I would think so ,and in GPU bound scenarios I wouldn't expect much change at all. Reply
InsaneScientist - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link1) Generally what happens with previews and first looks is that the company producing a product (Intel) will send out press samples to reviewers if the reviewers will sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). When the NDA expires (generally the same time for everyone), the reviewers can post their findings to the public.
This is done (I assume) to give reviewers enough time to thoroughly review a product without having (theoretically) to worry about having information leak until the company wants it to get out.
If, on the other hand, a reviewer acquires a product via other means so there is no NDA that they have to sign in order to get the product... well, they're not under NDA, so they're free to disclose whatever they want. Reply
sld - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkWhat a troll.
Start crying when Intel is able to jack up prices by 2x - 3x when AMD is gone.
You don't even realise that his fears of a tock- means that since Ivy Bridge has more features, presumably pushed forward from Haswell, Haswell itself will bring less features to the table. Reply
Hrel - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkWHY!!!!? Does Intel HAVE to disable Hyper Threading on the sub 300 dollar CPU's? It's not like having in ENABLED costs them anything more at all. It would just be providing their customers with a better product. This shit is infuriating. It's there on the chip no matter what, HT should just be on every single Intel chip no matter what. That shit pisses me off SOOOO much. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI would imagine there's going to be a fair few sub-300 USD dual-cores with HT down the line, though I suppose you meant specifically for the quads?
The reason seem obvious enough for me, if you need the extra performance in applications that stand to gain from HT you'll have to pay for it.
Frankly I don't see the added cost as anything major, considering the gains.
It's just differentiation really.
Sure, we'd all want more stuff cheaper (or for free!) but lacking HT doesn't in any way cripple a chip. Reply
sicofante - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIt's called market segmentation. Reply
Hector2 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkChill out. You'll pop a blodd vessel. With all that's happening in the world, THAT's what's pissing you off ? LMAO Reply
sld - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIntel's products get cheaper with smaller dies and with competition. Without competition, their dies cost the same to make, but they rob and loot your pockets and make obscene profits off you because your hated AMD no longer exists as an alternative supplier of good chips. Reply
BoFox - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThere are three different versions of HD 5570 (DDR2, DDR3, and GDDR5 - with the GDDR5 having FIVE times as much bandwidth as the DDR2 version).
There are also two different versions of HD 5450 (DDR2 and DDR3).
It would be appreciated if you could let us know which versions were used in the benchmarks in this article. Thanks Reply
BoFox - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkJust let us know which GPU was used for the discrete GPU tests! LOL.. Reply
KZ0 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link"ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7)", page 4
:) Reply
WiZARD7 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThere should be a comparison at the same clock speed - nehalem - sandy bridge - ivy bridge (@4 Ghz ) Reply
Breach1337 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkOn page, shouldn't:
" Doing so won't give you access to some of the newer 7-series chipset features like PCIe Gen 3 (some 6-series boards are claiming 3.0 support), native USB 3.0 (many 6-series boards have 3rd party USB 3.0 controllers) and Intel's Rapid Start Technology."
" Doing so will give you access to some of the newer 7-series chipset features like PCIe Gen 3 (some 6-series boards are claiming 3.0 support), native USB 3.0 (many 6-series boards have 3rd party USB 3.0 controllers) and Intel's Rapid Start Technology." Reply
iwod - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThere are many thing not mentioned.
Intel are strong in Software everywhere except the Gfx drivers department. No wonder why others call Anand a pro Intel site, i dont want to believe it, until all the article continue to label Intel are hard at work on Gfx drivers when they are clearly not. They are better then what they are used to be, but still far from good.
Graphics Quality on Intel IGP are not even close to what AMD offers.
Even if Haswell double the performance of Ivy they will still be one generation behind AMD.
I continue to wonder why they use their own GPU on Desktop / Laptop and not on Mobile SoC. They could have used PowerVR on Desktop as well, developing drivers for one hardware will simplify things and hopefully have bigger incentive to increase software R&D. Reply
meloz - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link>>No wonder why others call Anand a pro Intel site
What should he do, fake the benchmark results to make AMD look better than they are? Anand can only report his findings, he does this truthfully. Some people do not want to accept reality and prefer to shoot the messenger. Direct your frustrations towards AMD, not websites which report results of benchmarks.
From past benchmarks you can see the results at Anandtech are that different from other websites, AMD is getting destroyed on CPU perfomance and performance / watt metric.
>>I continue to wonder why they use their own GPU on Desktop / Laptop and not on Mobile SoC. They could have used PowerVR on Desktop as well,
FYI, they are dumping PowerVR in near future as well. Already covered on many websites, google it. PowerVR was a temporary fix, or rather an attempt at a fix which was more of a hassle and didn't work in the marketplace anyway.
They are now comitted to improving their own iGPU and drivers. This will take time for sure, Intel marches to its own beat.
The simple fact is that with the much weaker Sandy Brdige iGPU they outsold AMD 15 to 1, so even though the Ivy Bridge iGPU has not surpassed AMD yet, Intel should continue to do really well.
>>i dont want to believe it, until all the article continue to label Intel are hard at work on Gfx drivers when they are clearly not.
You can believe whatever you want to believe, this is not about beliefs but facts. As a user of Sandy Bridge and linux I know better than most just how much Intel drivers suck. In fact, their linux iGPU drivers suck much worse than Windows version (hard to imagine, but true) and weren't truly ready until Mesa 8.0, more than a year after release of the hardware.
But I also know they are working on things like SNA which in early test already offers ~20% performance boost.
No word on when it will be consumer ready, but Intel are working and steadily improving on drivers side as well. Perhaps not at the pace you want. You do not have to accept reality if it is so difficult for you, don't blame websites for reporting reality, however.
I am almost grateful Intel is not 'good enough' on GPU side as yet. It keeps AMD alive another year. Hopefully. Reply
meloz - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link>>From past benchmarks you can see the results at Anandtech are that different from other websites
Should read: From past benchmarks you can see the results at Anandtech are NOT that different from other websites.
Sigh, allow us to edit posts, if only for 10 minutes or so after making the initial post. Reply
ET - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkPowerVR has lower performance and fewer features, so would not be a good PC solution. I'm also sure that Intel would rather have its own solution, it's just that it can't yet compete with PowerVR at the low power arena. I imagine that if Intel succeeds in mobile space it will try to create its own low power 3D core.
As for graphics drivers, I'm sure Intel is hard at work at them, but probably has fewer people than AMD on that. Far as I can see it's no longer the case that reviews with Intel graphics keep talking about what didn't run correctly, which means that things are getting better. Reply
Belard - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAnyone notice in the Compile Chromium Test in which CORE count actually matters...
AMD's "8 core" fx8150 doesn't come close to the 3770K, much less the 2500K (4 core/4 thread) CPU.
But give it to AMD for Llano for easily out-performing intel with built-in graphics, handy for notebooks. AMD should have put GPUs into the fx-line.
The odd-thing about intel's HD-Graphics is that the lower-end really needs to have the HD4000 more than the higher end. Reply
fic2 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI totally agree. Intel is again going to cobble the lower end with the HD2500 graphics so that people that don't need the i7 cpu have to buy a discrete video card. I really wish review sites would hammer Intel for this and pressure them to include the better integrated graphics. It's not like the HD4000 is so good that people will buy an i7 just for the graphics. Reply
Jamahl - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkHD4000 takes up more die space which means it costs them more. That's all intel cares about, they don't give a shit about what people need at the lower end.
They were forced to start using HD3000 graphics in all their lower end chips because of Llano. The 2105 basically replaced the 2100 at the same money so they would be less embarrassed by Llano. That's what competition does. Reply
Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI like this tick. The CPU performance goes up by as much as I expected and the iGPU side goes up significantly.
If I had the spare change to throw around, I'd upgrade from my 3.8GHz i7 860. But as it is now, an upgraded CPU wouldn't do much for me in terms of gaming performance and I rarely do CPU intensive tasks these days. The chipset and native USB 3.0 are nice, but I'll wait for Haswell next year and get a good GPU or two instead. Reply
tiro_uspsss - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI'm a little confused :/
the 3770K consistently beat the 3820 (by a very small margin)
oh.. I found out why.. the specs of the 3820 as listed in the 'line up' are incorrect - the 3820 'only' turbos to 3.8 not 3.9.. is this why the 3770K did a little better?
aside from the small extra turbo that the 3770K has, the 3820 has more L3, more memory channels & a higher core clock (that's if the core clock listed for the 3770K is correct)
soooo.. the extra turbo.. is that why the 3770K is slightly better all-round? Reply
Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkYou know that they are different CPU generations, right? One is SNB-E on a 32nm process node and the other is IVB on a 22nm node. The review said that IVB has a 5-15% higher IPC. Reply
tiro_uspsss - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link*slaps own forehead* DUH! thats right! I forgot! :D I knew I was forgetting something! :P :D thanks! makes sense now! :) Reply
BSMonitor - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThe number scheme is misleading.
3820 and up are SNB-E.
3770K is Ivy Bridge.
An IVB core will perform better than a SNB core clocked at the same speed.
New architecture wins over cache, memory channels, clock speed. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link"Generational performance improvements on the CPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range. As you've just seen, Ivy Bridge offers a 7 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge - making it a bonafide tick from a CPU perspective. The 20 - 40% increase on the graphics side is what blurs the line between a conventional tick and what we have with Ivy Bridge."
"Being able to play brand new titles at reasonable frame rates as realistic resolutions is a bar that Intel has safely met." Reply
hansmuff - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThe review is good, I really like that you added the compilation benchmark for chromium -- good job!
I'm a little disappointed in the lack of overclocking information. What is the point of reviewing the K edition of this chip without even doing a simple overclock with a comparison to 2600K in terms of power draw and heat? Reply
Silenus - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThat is because this is NOT a review...it's just a preview. I'm sure they will do some overclocking testing in the full review later. Those results would be more meaningful then anyway as this is still early hardware/drivers. Reply
Zoomer - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIt would have been interesting to see. Personally, I don't care for IGP, as they sit disabled anyway. Right now, it seems like it's a 7% clock for clock perf increase, which is very poor for one process node. Knowing where the clocks can be will let everyone know exactly how much faster the CPU can be over SB. Reply
NeBlackCat - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkFor me, the most interesting things about IVB are improved multi-monitor support, and power savings not just at stock, but also undervolted (stock clock) and overclocked.
Because I want to know if I'm finally going to get that laptop or mini-itx system that can drive several monitors while remaining cool and sipping power, even under load.
Not covered at all. Shame. Reply
beck2050 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIntel marches on. Their domination of 80+% of all CPU markets will continue. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkPC and especially server market, sure, but not smartphone/tablet. Not yet, anyway. Reply
fvbounty - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkShould have a had SB 2700K to run clock for clock against the 3770K and see if there's much difference! Reply
ellarpc - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkAgreed! I was just about to post that same comment. It doesn't make much sense to compare it to a lower clocked SB product. Well unless you wanted to make the IB look better. Now I'm going to sift through anand's past reviews to see what kind of gains the 2700 has over the 2600. Reply
ellarpc - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkDoesn't look like Anand has a 2700k for testing Reply
ueharaf - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI was thinking that the difference in gpu perfomance between HD3000 and HD4000 about 20% to 40% increase perfomance, will remain in the ivy-bridge mobile chips!!! I hope soo!!! Reply
lilmoe - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkGreat review. You guys know your stuff. I've been waiting for a review like this since IvyBridge was announced.
However, I'll still "cling to my Core 2" since it does the job now, and I'll postpone my upgrade till next year. You make it seem like Haswell is a good reason to wait. I bought the system in early 2010, and I usually upgrade every 2-4 years. 3 years sounds just right. I'll be investing in SSDs since you talked me into it though, it seems a better upgrade at the moment. Reply
Breach1337 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkDid Intel specifically ask not to include overclocking tests in ES previews? Reply
mrSmigs - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThe ivy bridge 3770k is a direct replacement for the sandy bridge 2700k which is only a small upgrade from the 2600k yet still missing from the benchmarks to allow a direct architectural comparison.
Intel badly need powervr in its graphics core.... will they finally use a multicore Rogue series 6 core in the next generation (Haswell???) for some decent performance in their IGP???? They developed easily the fastest graphics core in the arm soc tablets/phones inside the ipad 2/iphone4s now its time to save intel (one of imgtechs biggest shareholders along with apple). Intel need to ditch this old weak igp core architecture and get with the times....
The amd llano even with its terribly weak cpu core still clearly outpaces this new improved intel hd4000 core in these non gpu limited tests. If amd had a faster cpu they would be even further ahead in regards to graphic capabilities, which appear cpu limited in many cases too(see discreet gpu tables to get an idea of intels cpu advantages).
Where are the in game checks on intel's notorious poor image quality, much like when radeons are compared to geforces to ensure these are even producing an acceptable image for the performance they give and not cutting corners???
Happy with the lower power and performance cpu gains of Ivy Bridge. Disappointed in the weak old graphics once again, which fail to match llano even with a far stronger cpu dragging it along... Reply
hasseb64 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkHow about OPEN GL support? Reply
numberoneoppa - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkPerhaps because not everybody who needs a lot of CPU power also needs to game or do other GPU heavy activities.
Come on, mate. Think. Reply
Conficio - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link
You guys asked for it and finally I have something I feel is a good software build test.
I just wanted to say thank you for this. May be we can add a maven based java test as well, which should give some idea of javac performance (or a large Eclipse base build all). Reply
Conficio - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkUhh, this comment renders funny oh Chrome. Reply
piesquared - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkIs this some kind of joke? It may be comical, but it sure ain't funny. intel themselves had slides circulating around showing at least 2x performance increasee over last generation. Now they show up with not even half that and Anand falls to his knees in praise.. Seems a little fishy to me where have I seen this before....Right, the primary elections in the US! Same shit, the elite give the mainstream media their marching orders, and the main stream media sets out to brainwash the mass population with that message. And you continue to lead the charge on downplaying image quality and functionality, ever since you became intel's mouthpiece. Where are the days of proper image quality comparisons, and feature benefit to consumers. That's all dropped off the radar because intel has abysmal and atrocious graphics capability and know how. They're the WORST in the industry, and yet he we have good ol' anand patting his buddy on the bumb ensuring that intel will ever have a need to actualy compete. They can just hand off money to the pieces' of shit in the world and have them manipulate the perception.
tics Reply
Hector2 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkSounds like you have some issues. Maybe you should see a therapist Reply
awg0681 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkMaybe I misread the article or read a different one. It came across to me that Anand was mainly comparing the HD4000 to HD3000. In which case there is generally a notable increase in performance. It's not 2x the HD3000, but doing a quick search trying to find these slides you mention showing such an increase came up with nothing. Only found one on Tom's which was a leaked slide comparing HD2000 to HD4000. If you could link some of those that would be great. Also, in just about every case where the HD4000 was (almost inevitably) beaten by AMD in graphics performance, it was pointed out. Reply
geddarkstorm - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI wonder how much of the improvement in the performance to power ratio is due to the trigate technology. In same ways, I was expecting a bigger jump around 20%, but since they also dropped the power by 30W, that says a lot. Looking at his from the perf/power perspective makes it a bigger deal than it sounds from a 5-15% CPU gain.
Still.. for some reason I feel a little disappointed. I thought trigate would change things even more in conjuncture with 22 nm process.
So can't wait to see what Hanswell will do. Reply
Exodite - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkDoes it matter though?
After all that argument cuts both ways.
Any iGPU today is good enough for 2D use, browsing and mainstream gaming - which means stuff like The SIMS 3 rather than Crysis.
The same is true for CPU power.
Heck, most users would be perfectly happy with using their smartphones as a desktop. Reply
krumme - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkWell the dilemma for Anand is apparent. If he stops writing those previews that is nice to Intel, someone else will get the oportunity and all the info. He can write two bad previews and the info and early chips just stops comming. Intel and Anand have a business to run, and there is a reason Intel gives Anand the chips (indirectly).
He have a "deal" with Intel, the same way we have a deal with Anand when we read the review. We get the info - bended/biased - and then we can think ourselves. I think its a fair deal :) - we get a lot of good info from this preview. The uninformed gets raped, but its alway like that. Someone have to pay for the show. Reply
chemist1 - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkThe Macbook Pro, for instance, has a discrete GPU, yet can switch to the chip-based GPU to save power when on battery. So having a better chip-based GPU makes sense in this context. Reply
Sabresiberian - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI'd like to see the discreet graphics card industry make the kind of progress, relatively speaking, Intel has made in the last 2 years.
Ivy Bridge is a ways from competing with a high-end discreet solution, but if the relative rates in progress don't change, Intel will catch up soon. Reply
sixtyfivedays - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - linkI use the iGPU on my build for my second monitor and it is quite nice.
I can watch HD videos on it and it doesn't take away from my dedicated GPU at all. Reply
mlkmade - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkIs that even possible? Special hack or software?
When you install a discrete graphics card, the integrated gpu gets disabled.
Would love to know how you accomplished this..Is it a desktop or laptop? Reply
mathew7 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - link"When you install a discrete graphics card, the integrated gpu gets disabled."
It was exclusive in northbridge-IGP units (Core2Duo/Quad and older). With Core-i, it's by default disabled but can be enabled through BIOS (of course if you don't have a P5x/6x chipset). Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link1. How much faster is Ivy Bridge at single thread versus my Conroe@3GHz?
2. How much faster is my GTX560Ti than HD4000? Reply
dr/owned - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - link1) Your 65 nm cpu would get the shit blow out of it by IB at the same clock speed in single threaded applications. Assuming 15% improvements in each of the tick-tocks since Conroe, a 1.8 Ghz IB would probably be about the same as a 3 Ghz Conroe.
2) Discrete graphics vs. integrated graphics. Intel isn't trying to compete here so it's a stupid comparison. Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, March 09, 2012 - link1. Your "get the shit blown out" is worthless. All I'm looking for is a number, and your effective answer is +67%.
2. It's not a stupid comparison, because:
a) I'm interested.
b) HD4000 is designed for games.
c) They benchmarked with modern games.
d) Games are designed around people's performance. Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, March 09, 2012 - link1. Another website shows the i7 3770K scored 2643 on the Fritz Chess Benchmark with 1 processor. My machine does 2093. That's only 26% different.
2. I very roughly estimate the GTX560Ti might be 5-6x faster than the HD4000.
It'd be useful to see a real comparison of these though. Reply
The0ne - Wednesday, March 07, 2012 - link"There's not enough of an improvement to make existing SNB owners want to upgrade, but if you're still clinging to an old Core 2 (or earlier) system, Ivy will be a great step forward."
Basically all the laptops in the last few years for business have been bought with C2D. I think with Ivy, it's a great time to upgrade them all and see a good improvement. Same for family members too. I can't wait to try them out! Thanks for the review Anand. Reply
benjaminbldp - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkmaybe intel should drop the graphics all together, i don't like it, let the pro take care of it. just too much. Reply
dr/owned - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkThis article blows because there's no overclocking results. We're not looking for a fine tuned overclock. Just give us the rough and dirty! My money is on 5 ghz with minimal effort using an air cooler. Reply
dagamer34 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkIt's a preview, not a review. Reply
dr/owned - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkIt seems like Intel has the tick-tocks backwards. The i7-920 is arguably the greatest cpu to come out in recent years and it was "just" a tick. Reply
Wardrop - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkI'm afraid you have it backwards.
The i7-920 is a Nehalem processor (it's a 45nm chip). It's a tock. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? Reply
bigboxes - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkLook at the chart. Nehalem (i920) was a tock. Reply
just4U - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkI have to disagree with you on the i920 being such a huge leap. As someone who goes thru virtually every cpu line up for AMD/Intel I'd have to say the C2D (or quad) 6x series was the biggest leap forward in the past decade. Before that it was the A64 and X2 variants (altho.. we didn't get alot of use out of those secondary cores) Reply
IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkLOL, this must be the most hilarious argument I've heard in a while.
How do you relate 30+ % graphics gain as being ALL CPU? Don't be ridiculous, and that's an understatement. Reply
Silma - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkAre low-res testing really relevant for graphics?
Most players play at 1920x1080 or higher.
1368x720 or 1680x1050 does not seem relevant to me at all for most people, especially those purchasing a computer with this processor. Reply
dagamer34 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkMost players who game at 1920x1080 also have graphics cards that cost more than $100. That's not what this was testing. Reply
kensiko - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkMan you won't believe the difference :)
Get an SSD with that. Reply
dagamer34 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkYou're going to seriously start wondering why you didn't upgrade sooner. Just don't hurt yourself too much when you slap your own face. Tech has advanced astronomically in the last 10 years.
Heck, I'm pretty sure the iPad 2 is faster than your Northwood Pentium 4. Reply
Yojimbo - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkuhh.. i don't think that's true. graphics intensive applications are not the only ones that benefit from fast CPUs. Reply
krumme - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkWhere does Charlie claim to be biased?
But i agree, this sacred, aura, "this is not sanctioned by Intel" is a pain to read. It makes thesse articles a little bit difficult to start reading :)
But how profitable, and how good a business do you have if you dont have "good conections"? - charlie uses his for underhand information, anand his to get info before the others. Its very obvious for us to interprete Anands article because we know the obvious, - it have to be profitable for both anand and Intel. But what about Charlie, what is the motives for the people leaking info to him? - its not quite so obvious and transparrent. Reply
awg0681 - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - link"Sure, he was comparing Intel graphics to Intel graphics, except he wasn't, because he himself threw Llano in there to compare."
By the same token, if he had not included Llano results people would be wondering where they were and complaining that they weren't included. Puts Anand in a catch 22 when deciding whether or not to include Llano.
There is validity to the complaint about the numbers being incorrect. Those should be looked at and corrected. Glossing over the results and no mention of Llano being more capable, again, this was mainly to compare Intel v Intel in a preview of their new chip and improvements they've made since last gen. Sure, he could've been more thorough with the AMD v Intel side, but that's not really what this article was about. We could also go to a steakhouse and complain there's not a large vegetarian meal selection too. Reply
Azeraph - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - linkit doesn't really matter if the igp isn't that great most people don't buy them for their graphics power.I get the feeling that maybe intel is just putting them out there to keep it's base solid against AMD,Not that it needs it and i'm an amd fan. i found something the other day that will possibly change how tomorrows processors will use light instead of electricity.
http://scitechdaily.com/penn-researchers-build-a-c... Reply
arno - Friday, March 09, 2012 - link...hi everybody.
I'm an electrical engineer, doing intensive "spice" simulations.
I want to know if, as it requires a lot of floating point calculations, does it worth to wait for Ivy Bridge instead of buying right now a laptop with a quadcore Sandy Bridge? I expected Ivy Bridge for March and i've been waiting since last december :(.
To buy now would be very comfortable, as i'm in the simulaiton phase of my project. To buy later, I believe, would make more sense in term of pure performances . But how much sense is the question....
Thanks for sharing
PS (another thing is also theuse of 1600 memory instead of 1333, which might be doing it for another software I use) Reply
arno - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkI wonder how IvyBridge perform in term offloating point calculations as I do intensive electrical simulations.
I urgently need an upgrade and would definitely go for a Ivy Bridge. But I've been waiting a long time now and Ivy Bridge may again been delayed.
Does anyone have an advice about it?
Thanks for sharing. Reply
Nomorehero - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkHow about OC? Info please?
Is hard to decide wait until IB or get SB now because the how well IB can OC. Reply
arno - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkNo, it is just out of question for me to overclock. I wanna buy a profesional laptop (w520 lenovo). SO no way to teak it.
Fact is memory will be 1600 Mhz and the processor a bit stronger with maybe a better memory controler.
At one month of the release, it worth to wait it.
Just wanna make sure that in my particular case it really worth it cause i'm tired of my heavy old laptop. I buy this damn machine just for working after all. At home, my E8400 is still upto date for what I do with it. Reply
DDR4 - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkI want to see some increase in performance and actual processing power. For now, i can leave the graphics to the GPU. Reply
Nexing - Friday, March 09, 2012 - link@Arno
I'd consider a few aspects:
-Do you need to use precision external gear, -like we audio people do with soundcards- and hence need ExpressCard or Thunderbolt connectors? Then I'd expect May-Jun launches will bring those professional Laptops and Ultrabooks.
-If portability is important, factual Sandy bridge battery capacity is near 4 hours whether Ivy Bridge battery will extend real usage around eight hours for similar performance.
-Furthermore USB 3.0 will be native, something important since most renesas boards have been far from perfect and just their recent (Feb/March 2012) releases seem to finally have nailed efficiency.. Problems with USB 3.0 equiped Sandy Bridge laptops abound in forums, and that is in professional brands.
-If you were questioning about SandyB vs IvyB desktops, you could still buy now the former and later upgrade for the later CPU, but with the mobile platform, Intel has stated that H67M -their actual chipsett platform, also named Cougar Point- Upgradeability is not going to be feasible, despíte it could be technically possible easily..
Therefore, there a many reasons pointing to wait. Since sales are very low, any are choosing this route. Reply
arno - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkThanks Nexing for u answer. Actually, i totally agree with you on:
portability => IB is a shrink and must be more power efficient for an equivalent task load. Seems that the test proves it. moreover, I will work a lot in trains or outdoors (visiting customers), so it is definitely a +.
USB 3 => u feedback is very interesting. I myself think that "native" versus "add on" USB3 feature must be better. And that was also a reason for me to wait when last december, i was already thinking of buying something new. Now i'm quite sure that it was the good thing to do.
For the rest, more than external gears, I need a processor good in floating points calculation. I do intensive electrical simulations so i definitely need it.
I took my decision and I will wait. This laptop will replace and desktop and laptop for work (and work only cause for internet or usual offices task, i definitely think a core 2 duo can make it); so better to catch the best. I will manage the present emergency I have, praying for Lenovo (or Samsung?) to offer new Ivy Bridge laptop as soon as possible. Let's make a bet: Lenovo got it ready to release and is just waiting for the official launch date....
thanks for sharing ;) Reply
Nexing - Friday, March 09, 2012 - linkShould say:
"many are taking this waiting route" Reply
arno - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link"FP/integer divider delivers 2x throughput compared to Sandy Bridge"
I should read more carefully. That is an answer to my question. Maybe not a spectacular improvement, but still one. Reply
DrWattsOn - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link@arno I'm GLAD you didn't read more carefully, because you posted the question, and Nexing's answer focused me on something I still wasn't considering as a major factor in my decision: USB3. Between your question and the response, I also got a better picture of how specific use is affected by the tech. So, I'm a waiter (tho I don't serve food 8^D ). Reply
stephenbrooks - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkIntel released on 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012.
In base 9 they're on schedule. Reply
bhima - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkBasically every 2D-based graphic designer/web designer doesn't need a discrete GPU for their work. The IGPs handle that workload fine (mainly because most of the processing needed for photoshop, indesign, illustrator or dreamweaver is CPU based). A discrete GPU gives you better performance with the very limited 3D stuff that photoshop offers which is situational at best for the vast majority of graphic designers.
3D artists and those that pump a ton of effects in video editing, they would benefit from discrete. Reply
shadow king - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link^ =) Reply
taltamir - Monday, March 12, 2012 - linkRarson is correct.
He isn't suggesting no IGP at all. He is saying put a good IGP on the lower end.
While there ARE people who need a powerful CPU and will not get a video card because they don't play games, those people do not in any way benefit from having a higher end IGP.
High end gamers = discreete GPU + Powerful CPU
Budget gamers = IGP + mid-low range CPU
Non gamers with money = High end CPU + IGP (underused)
Non gamers on a budget = Mid-low range CPU + IGP (underused)
The only people who need a more powerful GPU are the budget gamers and thus it makes sense on the lower end CPUs to have a more powerful IGP. Reply
Urillusion17 - Monday, March 12, 2012 - linkGreat article but.... where are the temps??? The few benches I have seen don't mention overclocking, and if they do, they do not mention temps. I am hearing this chip can boil water! I would think that would be as important as anything else... Reply
DrWattsOn - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link+1 (very much in agreement) Reply
boogerlad - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - linkis it possible to fully load the igp with an opencl application, and not affect the cpu performance at all? From what I've read, it appears the igp shares the cache with the cpu, so will that affect performance? Reply
rocker123 - Monday, March 19, 2012 - linkGenerational performance improvements on the CPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range. As you've just seen, Ivy Bridge offers a 7 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge - making it a bonafide tick from a CPU perspective
Should be :Generational performance improvements on the GPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range Reply
rocker123 - Monday, March 19, 2012 - linkGenerational performance improvements on the CPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range. As you've just seen, Ivy Bridge offers a 7 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge - making it a bonafide tick from a CPU perspective
Should be :Generational performance improvements on the GPU side generally fall in the 20 - 40% range Reply
tipoo - Monday, March 19, 2012 - linkThey give the drivers their own tweaks and bug fixes, but I doubt they could do something like add T&L without the manufacturers support. In fact, they didn't, unless they have bigger driver teams now. Reply
ClagMaster - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link"Personally, I want more and I suspect that Haswell will deliver much of that. It is worth pointing out that Intel is progressing at a faster rate than the discrete GPU industry at this point. Admittedly the gap is downright huge, but from what I've heard even the significant gains we're seeing here with Ivy will pale in comparison to what Haswell provides."
Personally, I believe on-board graphics will never be on par with a dedicated graphics part. And it is obcessive-compulsive ridiculous to compare the performance of the HD4000 with discrete graphics and complain its not as good.
The HD4000 is meant for providing graphics for business and multi-media computers. And for that purpose it is outstanding.
If you want gaming or engineering workstation performance, get a discrete graphics card. And stop angsting about how bad onboard graphics is to discrete graphics. Reply
pottermd - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - linkToday's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home.
The article contained this statement. It's not really true. I've had a long nap and the render I'm doing is still running. :) Reply
Dracusis - Friday, April 06, 2012 - link"The people who need integrated graphics"
No one *needs* integrated graphics. But not everyone needs discrete graphics. The higher performance an IGP has, the less people overall will *need* DGPs.
Not all games need dedicated graphics cards, just the multi million dollar re-hashed COD's that choke retail stores. There are literally thousands of other games around that only require a small amount of graphics processing power. Flash now has 3D accelerated content and almost every developer using it will target IGP performance levels. Almost all casual game developers target IGPs as well, they're not selling to COD players. Sure, most of those games won't need a hight end CPU as well, but people don't buy computers to play casual games, they buy them for a massive range of tasks, the vast majority of which will be CPU bound so faster would be better.
Also, as an indie game developer I hit performance walls with CPUs more often than I do with GPUs. You can always scale back geometry/triangle counts, trim or cut certain visual effects but cutting back on CPU related overheads generally means you're cutting out gameplay. Reply
Valitri - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link"there's also the question of which one (CPU or GPU) approaches "good enough" first."
I was worried that my A6 3420 laptop would feel sluggish in windows and general tasks, especially compared to my 2500k desktop system. However, I've been very surprised and think it works just fine in windows.
I was also very impressed that the iGPU lets me play most newer games comfortably. I was able to OC my A6 3420 on my Samsung 3 series to 2.0ghz. It runs Crysis 2 on low at 1366x768 in the 25-30 fps range. Now to me that is not really playable, but I was surprised it could even run it. Other games like SC2, Arkam Asylum, CSS, WOW, have all ran like a champ. Most of them even on medium settings!
So I think if you want a cheap laptop (mine was $399), and you want the ability to play some games while still doing general tasks well, we have already hit that "good enough" stage on the CPU department. It will be interesting to see if Windows 8/Metro does anything to change this. Reply
p05esto - Monday, April 23, 2012 - linkYou are dead wrong. I need fast CPU for my work but need or care about the gpu. You realize people do more than game, right. Reply
SquirrelPunch - Monday, April 23, 2012 - linkCould not disagree more.
In fact the majority of power users do not need a powerful GPU, just lots of RAM and fast CPU.
Graphics designers: All 2D mostly, do not need powerful GPU.
Video Editors: Same as above.
Software developers (not games): same as above
Standard CAD: No intensive 3D models involved.
Most also don't care for multi-monitor setups, or the 2x that HD series will let you use. Reply
klmccaughey - Monday, April 23, 2012 - linkIntel needs another Larrabee. It keeps cobbling together these graphics cores, which are always well short of the mark. Either Larrabee 2 or licence from Nvidia, but something has to be done about it in the long (possible mid) term. It makes perfect sense and, to me anyway, has the air of inevitability about it.
Why not take the plunge? Reply
MarkJohnson - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkI find it odd the AMD A8-3870K was left out of the power consumption section, but is in the others.
I ran a quick test and my kill-a-watt meter read 126Watts max x264 HD v5.0.1 which bests all of them
It also idles at 34.5 watts which blows them all away by a very large margin. The best is double what the AMD A8-3870K idles. Reply


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Warm apples with vanilla cream sauce
Makes 4 servings
I usually prepare this dessert just before serving because I love the aroma in my kitchen as the apples cook. But, I have found that it can be made early in the day, refrigerated in a covered container, and reheated in the microwave for about 2 minutes on HIGH.
The warm apples are delicious served over premium vanilla ice cream, with gingersnaps, or over slices of gingerbread cake. Or, top the warm apples with vanilla yogurt and add a sprinkling of granola or chopped pecans.
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
2 crisp, semisweet apples (such as Braeburn or Granny Smith), peeled, cored, and cut into ½-inch
dice ½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup half-and-half
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Ground nutmeg (preferably freshly grated) for garnish
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sugar; stir for about 1 minute or until it begins to melt.
Add the apples; cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until the apples are tender and the butter is lightly browned.
Meanwhile, put the cranberries in a small microwave-proof custard cup with 2 tablespoons water. Cover with waxed paper and microwave on HIGH for 1 ½ minutes or until the cranberries are softened. Drain any water remaining.
Stir the half-and-half, vanilla, and softened cranberries into the apples. Reduce the heat to medium-low; cover and simmer for about 2 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
Serve warm in small dessert bowls. Garnish with nutmeg.
More Stories
Ingredients 1 cup butter 2 teaspoons Worcestershire…
2 ripe avocados
1/2 teaspoon Kosher…

subset: commoncrawl


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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/7/2013 (1505 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A bearded, chain-smoking radical and an ascot-wearing British architect walk into Winnipeg city hall.
It sounds like the setup for a joke, and in 1974 the idea of an urban Prairie oasis, located 800 kilometres from any other major city and with only a few outdoor concerts under its belt, becoming home to one of the most successful folk festivals in North America probably did seem pretty laughable.
It was Winnipeg's centennial year, so Mitch Podolak and Colin Gorrie weren't the only ones pitching wild ideas for the city to celebrate its 100th birthday.
But Podolak, who'd been producing documentaries for CBC radio at the time, was the only dreamer to approach the centennial committee with cash in hand. He'd gotten $16,000 in startup funds from Paul Mills (a.k.a. Curly Boy Stubbs), an award-winning producer of Touch the Earth, CBC's seminal folk and roots radio show.
"I came in and put the money on the table. They gave me a whack of cash (about $100,000) and we were off," Podolak, 65, recalls of how he and Gorrie, a former soldier with a theatre background, talked the powers that be into supporting the Winnipeg Centennial Folksong Festival.
Still, it was a hard sell, this idea to mount a music festival in a provincial park. Winnipeg's folk music scene in the early '70s consisted of just a few small coffee houses, and for politicians of the day, "folk" was synonymous with "rock."
The pair would need something big to bring everyone on board. Something big like Podolak's personality.
"Ruthless and idealistic, abrasive and charismatic, Podolak created the Winnipeg Folk Festival almost as a singular act of bravado. He continues to keep it alive with the same determination," Steve Johnson and Sheldon Oberman wrote of the festival's co-founder in The Folk Festival Book (Turnstone Press, 1984).
In the book, a Winnipeg Free Press reporter also describes him as "the premier entrepreneur of folk music... a transcontinental telephone screamer and cajoler, ego masseur, bully-boy, fiscal conjurer, seat-of-the-pants strategist, romantic and catalyst for an event that has become a North American institution."
As the authors relate in the book, Podolak came by his twin passions of music and social justice honestly.
The son of immigrant garment workers and classical musicians, his parents were also Communists and the Toronto native grew up with Lenin's books scattered around the family home.
Expelled from school in Grade 9, he soon became a fixture at Toronto's Bohemian Embassy Coffee House where he was introduced to folk singers from across the continent -- and the protest movement.
But the life-changing experience came when his older sister took him to see American folk icon Pete Seeger at Massey Hall. "He blew me out of the room," Podolak recalls. "I discovered what I loved at that moment. I'd been playing classical music because I was forced to, but the next day I went out and traded my clarinet for a banjo."
By the time he arrived in Winnipeg in 1968, Podolak was an experienced union organizer and had toured the country speaking out against the war in Vietnam. He came here because the Young Socialists, part of the Trotskyist youth movement, sent him to start a Winnipeg chapter.
All Communist parties in the world used music to recruit people, Podolak says, including the American Communist Party, which he credits for the North American folk music revival, led by Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
"The Winnipeg Folk Festival is entirely, 100 per cent a product of that," says Podolak, who is still (surprise, surprise) outspoken about his political views.
That one-time free weekend of music he and Gorrie convinced Winnipeg to gift its citizen in 1974 was a "seat-of-the pants operation" that drew a reported 22,000 fans over three days. There were just over a dozen volunteers, mostly recruited from among the duo's friends. The budget was overspent.
But as the event drew to a close on Sunday night, according to The Folk Festival Book, co-host and CBC radio personality Peter Gzowski announced to the crowd the festival was too good to be a one-time thing and he was donating his paycheque to keep it alive. "Suddenly people were standing up waving money. The organizers grabbed baskets to collect it all and the issue was settled," the authors write.
As the 40th annual Winnipeg Folk Festival gets underway (it runs to July 14 at Birds Hill Park; see www.winnipegfolkfestival for info), Podolak reflects on "the real power of the organization."
He refers to the 2,500 or so volunteers who transform Birds Hill Park into a temporary city -- in 2011 the event posted a record paid attendance of 59,324 visitors -- every year, handling every festival task from ticket sales to toilet paper.
"If you take the time to educate a volunteer, by the time two years have gone by, that volunteer is worth 5.1 weekend passes," says Podolak who, seizing another opportunity to slip a little politics into the conversation, mentions that he modelled the volunteer system on the Bolshevik Party of 1917.
"It was the only model I knew," he laughs.
The early years were tough. After three money-losing years in a row, the festival was seriously in debt when Jon Singleton, an accounting student, signed on as treasurer in 1978.
"Sometimes suppliers had to wait a year to get paid. The one thing Mitch insisted on was that performers got paid," says Singleton, who retired as Manitoba's provincial auditor in 2006.
"We probably got rained out more often than not in the first five years. At the time, we were really dependent on walk-up sales."
Singleton recalls one rainy festival where Pete Seeger, seeing the desperation of the situation, told organizers they could keep his performance fee.
While the festival tickets were initially sold through an outside "for profit" company, Singleton and his wife, Barbara Hiebert (volunteer manager for 16 years), set up a volunteer-run box office on site so the fest could reap more of the revenue. They even bought sheriff's badges for crew supervisors and dubbed the front-line staff "bandits," as their job was to put wristbands on attendees. They ran the box office for several years.
Now the couple, who have never missed a folk fest, run "base camp" in an RV behind the main stage, caring for their grandchildren while their daughter and son-in-law work as production manager and site manager, respectively.
Jon and Barbara, along with her sister Lorna and their children, Arwen and Bram (and Arwen's husband Taavo Sults), are the recipients of the 2013 Glass Banjo Award, the Winnipeg Folk Festival's highest honour. The award recognizes volunteers, supporters, partners and organizations that have made extraordinary contributions. The Fairmont Winnipeg is also receiving the award this year. It will be presented at 7 p.m. Saturday on the mainstage.
Lorna Hiebert was one of the key organizers of the first festival. She set up the arts and crafts village, was on staff as office manager until 1979 and then volunteered for the next 25 years, including a stint as stage manager.
Hiebert, 61, can recall the days before "tweener" sets -- solo or two-piece acts that play between mainstage performances -- when crews had to build and strike sets in three minutes, often during live CBC broadcasts. And there was no green room, lounge or much of a backstage area at all, really.
"We always had one person who had to go hunt down the artists because we didn't have a place to keep them back there," she says. "We didn't have a toilet nearby. So we had a pail and some blankets."
Podolak hasn't been directly involved with the Winnipeg Folk Festival since 1986, although he still attends.
"After the 12th festival I decided I needed to go and learn a whole bunch more about music. I was doing the same kind of program over and over and I needed it to change. I had used up what I knew."
So he took a year off and started the West End Cultural Centre. In 2007, he and his wife, Ava Kobrinsky, launched Home Routes, a non-profit arts organization that arranges house concert tours for artists, urban folk clubs and travelling folk shows. It even has two new folk festivals in the works: one in Charlottetown, P.E.I, and one in Kingsville, Ont.
Leonard Podolak, 37, who was born three weeks after the second Winnipeg Folk Festival, says the festival has been a "life-defining" event -- particularly the part where he grew up with folk music legends sleeping on the couch and playing fiddle in the family living room.
"It's where we heard stuff you wouldn't hear on mainstream radio -- or any radio," says the banjo player, who will miss this year's festival because he'll be playing the inaugural Red Wing Roots festival in Mount Salon, Va., with his Juno-winning, Grammy-nominated band, the Duhks.
Like his father, he eschews the "star system." (In the early years, Mitch decreed every performer, no matter how well known, would be paid the same fee.
"The real headliner is the festival itself, and the community," Leonard says. "If you talk to your average 22-year-old attendee, there may be an act on the bill they're excited about seeing, but they're probably way more excited about the good times they're going to have with their friends and the music they'll discover."


text:
UF confirms assistant hire
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 10:53 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 10:53 a.m.
The news that broke Sunday night became official Tuesday, with Florida coach Will Muschamp announcing the hiring of Brad Lawing as the Gators' new defensive line coach. Lawing also was named assistant head coach.
"We are excited to have Brad Lawing join our coaching staff," Muschamp said in a UF release. "His track record speaks for itself — his nearly three decades of experience coaching defensive linemen, his familiarity with the SEC and our shared philosophical beliefs make him a perfect fit for our program."
Lawing comes to UF from South Carolina, where he has been Steve Spurrier's defensive line coach since 2006. Including a previous stint with the Gamecocks, Lawing coached at USC for 17 years. He has 33 years of coaching experience, 29 on the defensive line.
"I'm excited to have the opportunity to work with Coach Muschamp and the entire Gator coaching staff," Lawing said. "Coach Muschamp and I share the same philosophical beliefs defensively. I've enjoyed the many years I've had in South Carolina and I'm grateful for the opportunities Coach Spurrier provided to me."
From 2003-05, Lawing coached North Carolina's defensive line and served as the recruiting coordinator. His three recruiting classes were ranked among the nation's top 25.
The hiring of Lawing completes Muschamp's coaching staff.
Contact Robbie Andreu at 352-374-5022 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Also check out Andreu's blog at Gatorsports.com.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


text:
Tidal: Fiona Apple: Music
Fiona Apple is one of my favorite artists of all time. You might remember the outspoken speech she made during the MTV awards [years back] well she is even more outspoken through her lyrics, holding nothing back. her chillingly beautiful skills with the ivory keys perfectly accompany her unique and deep voice.


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Lollapalooza rocks Berlin
The second edition of Germany's version of the U.S. festival – hailed as the Woodstock of the nineties – comes to the German capital September 10 and 11. The lineup includes Jess Glynne (photo) and Radiohead.
The second edition of Germany's version of the U.S. festival – hailed as the Woodstock of the nineties – comes to the German capital September 10 and 11. The lineup includes Jess Glynne (photo) and Radiohead.
Who says you need mountains to go climbing? There are plenty of alternatives in the shape of spectacular climbing walls on churches, dams and the cooling towers of nuclear power plants.
Built 150 years ago, St. Alban's Church in Liverpool, England, inspires aspiration to other spheres. Today, visitors no longer come here to pray, but to climb its venerable walls, including an overhanging 17.5-meter lead wall.
The cooling tower of the former nuclear reactor in Kalkar, Germany, stands 58 meters high and has been repurposed as a climbing wall. If you prefer a different kind of thrill, there's a roller coaster next door.
Surrounded by authentic Alpine peaks, the steep wall of the Lago di Luzzone reservoir in Switzerland offers a unique challenge: It is the world's highest artificial climbing wall with 650 holds over a vertical distance of 163 meters.
The Okavango Delta covers more than 20 000 square kilometers and is home to a staggering variety of species, including elephants, lions, hippos and leopards. Stylish, sustainable Sandibe Lodge with its twelve luxurious wooden chalets is in the middle of the great outdoors.
Win one of five digital instant cameras by cult brand Polaroid. The digital camera allows you to snap, print, and share all of your favorite photos instantly with app-driven creative & new Bluetooth connectivity.
If you would like to take part in the draw, please send an email with "Polaroid" in the subject line to firstname.lastname@example.com. The deadline for entries is August 31. We will notify you by email if you win.
A cash equivalent will not be paid and our decision will be final.
High flyer
The Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that connects the largely car-free district of Roosevelt Island with Manhattan, was supposed to be a temporary line until the subway under the East River was completed. Work on the subway was delayed and New Yorkers loved the tram so much that they refused to give it up – much to the delight of many tourists.


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Revolution or Evolution? ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini On Showby Ian Cutress on 3/7/2013 4:33 AM EST
38 Comments
Back to Article
gregounech - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkLooking forward to having options of this type.
I also noticed a little typo in your article Ian :
"back at HQ as thet are testing the idea," Reply
IanCutress - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI would like to believe there is a market for 17cm video cards, as long as noise and heat generation isn't affected too much. It would all be down to the dissipation limits of the cooler. Something tells me overclocking abilities would be affected as well.
Fixed the typo, thanks :) Reply
scook9 - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkPeople would not be getting these for the overclocking. It has my interest, just like the GTX 570 HD from EVGA was interesting. For me it was interesting for 2 reasons:
-It was the most powerful GPU that was not longer than a mATX board (for use in my HTPC)
-It had the power ports on the back of the card and not the side. This allows for a case that does not have the side clearance for those plugs.
Below is the picture of my setup, it is all in an Antec Veris Fusion case which looks awesome for a HTPC.
Cooling the GPUs is a pain right now, but working on that :) The CPU is an i5 2500k Reply
JPForums - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkUnfortunately, not everyone's enclosure has extra space in front of the cards to support power cables like your enclosure. It would be really nice if they made a card with both front and top mounted connectors. It wouldn't be hard to design at all and you could just cap the unused connector. This way, the card would be usable in both thin and shallow enclosures. Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkThe problem with that is you'd have a support problem from people who got confused and thought they needed to connect both sets of power connections. It's easier for the OEM to make two almost identical cards with plugs in different locations. Reply
bobbozzo - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkMaybe they could make a cover that slides (round the corner), so that only one set of connectors could be used at a time. Reply
Paul Tarnowski - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkEasier to recess it and add two adapters, one that lets you change it to the side, and another that lets you do so to the "underside" of the PCB. That way you have an option to have it straight (no adapter), to the side, or to the one place where no one has anything in a single card configuration.
Also it's cheaper. Reply
ShieTar - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkWhy would that even be a problem? There is no downside to connecting the card to the voltage source by 2 parallel wires instead of just one. Reply
JPForums - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI don't really think cooling is the limiting factor. Better coolers that could fit in the smaller card already exist. I don't see any reason why a cleverly designed vapor chamber heatsink wouldn't work. Beyond that, vapor chambers and heatpipes have been combined to good effect. There looks to be space near the back of the card not currently occupied by heatsink area that could be piped into. Then there is the fact that hardly manufacturers currently uses full copper heatsinks. Granted, large copper heatsinks are very heavy, but it could be used to very good effect when trying to maximize the cooling when size is limited.
Of course, these options have the potential to be a bit loud seeing as you would still need to move an appreciable amount of air across smaller heatsinks with a smaller fan. Also, airflow in mITX cases isn't always the best, so despite the extra noise, a direct exhaust or partial direct exhaust system would probably work out better. Then again, a water block and radiator would solve both the cooling and noise problem.
Which brings me to what I consider the biggest hurdle: Cost. The cooling can be done and it can be done quietly, but can it be done for a price people will pay. Most likely, if this device comes to market, it will be a little bit hotter, noisier, and pricier that the base model. Some may scoff that the parts list is smaller and the card is less capable, but it is a much bigger challenge designing the product into such a small envelope. A small price premium could be easily justified for those the product targets. I'd love to see such a design come to market. I wouldn't use it personally, but there are plenty of systems I build for others that could use it. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - linkToo bad AMD can't do anything like this, as we know then the fanboys would be drooling and screaming it's better than sliced bread.
Another reason why nVidia makes profits $$$$ and amd is dying. Reply
geniusloci - Sunday, March 17, 2013 - linkAsus did this...not Nvidia. Reply
ToTTenTranz - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkThis isn't new. Zotac has had a GTX670 of this size since last year:
Asus didn't do any rocket science. 17cm is the GTX670 PCB's normal length (from nVidia's default PCB for the GTX670). All they had to do was to slap in a different cooler that doesn't extend the card's range.
Either way, anyone can buy a "normal length" GTX670 and then just change the cooler for this:
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/455/accelero... Reply
IanCutress - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkThe Zotac card doesn't seem to have been sold outside of Japan/China - correct me if I'm wrong.
It's true the GTX 670 reference PCB is 6.75 inches long, but the NVIDIA reference cooler was 9-9.5 inches. So yes you could go out and buy a cooler for your card (whatever that does to the warranty) and hope it carries the TDP requirements of the card, or get one already made and hopefully will be distributed outside of Asia. I would have hoped that if it was as simple as you make it out to be that it would have been done months ago. Reply
JPForums - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI believe you are correct that this particular Zotac card isn't sold in Europe/North America. (I haven't been able to get a hold of it)
The after market cool Totten mentions is perfectly capable of cooling a GTX670 and stands as an option for people willing to modify their cooling solution (and most likely void their warranty). However, this isn't usually acceptable when you are building for someone else. It would be nice to see the Asus card come to market. Reply
DarkStryke - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkZotac was first, but who would buy a zotac card if an Asus is available? Reply
Simon42 - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI'm building an ITX system with the mobo pictured and I've been experimenting. I have a 5770 that's short enough but I wanted more powerful so I tried a 660 Ti. Both are Gigabyte and their 10 cm air coolers are pretty close to silent (my custom case is so small that the GPU fan is outside in open air so no heat problem). I'm running the 660 Ti on the most powerful SFX PSU I could find - Silverstone 450W - and although it should work, it's been unstable. I will have to try again with a clean install because I think my transition from AMD to nVidia drivers messed up things.
Now, my question: is there a small SFX PSU that's powerful enough to drive a 670 GTX? I believe 450W theoretically does it, but that's awfully tight... Reply
Menty - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI was running a GTX 670 and an overclocked 2500k from a 430w Antec Neo for several months :) One of the 450w SFX supplies should have no problem. Reply
Zap - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkYes, either of the two Silverstone 450W units will work fine for a single GTX 670 and socket 1155. Power draw of such a system is just over 300W. See link.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598 Reply
Demon-Xanth - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI don't have a "large number of cards" requirement anymore for my PC. But I do like a moderately beefy vid card. The only card in my system is a vidcard. So really, the biggest reason for not going to an itx is fitting a good card in the tiny chassis. A shorter card like this may not be mainstream, but I believe it to have a large enough niche to be worth filling. Reply
Guspaz - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkAs somebody with an SFF case (a Shuttle, so it's advertised as supporting itx motherboards, but the stock mobo is a bit bigger than itx), fitting everything in there was tough. However, I don't think length is the problem.
I've got a full-sized GTX 670 in my system, and the length wasn't really a problem. The biggest problem was the power connectors. My case is designed specifically for a full-sized card in terms of length, but there is very little clearance above the card (the optical drive bay assembly slots in on top of it), so I end up with the GPU power cables bent at an extreme angle, and even then the optical drive bay assembly is putting a LOT of downward pressure on that card at the rear portion of it. In my case, I don't know if putting power connectors on the end of the card would help (because it's a full-length card in an SFF case), but a combination of the two things, a shorter card and power connectors on the end instead of the top, would have made life MUCH easier.
Also, the cooler. I can fit a two-slot cooler in my system, barely, and while that means the GPU takes up both of my system's two expansion slots (x16 slot plus x4 slot), that isn't a problem because like most people the GPU is the only card I need in the system. But it still cuts it very close to tolerances, so a 1.5 or 1.75 slot cooler would help. That shouldn't be impossible; the one we see in this picture is clearly not as efficient as it gets. I'd make the heatsink larger and include more copper in order to reduce the size a bit. The pictures of this DirectCU make it look like they've got a custom shroud but a generic heatsink, not a heatsink designed to maximize the efficiency of the volume inside of the shroud. Reply
marc1000 - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkthere is also the Zotac GTX660 that is a nice GPU under 17cm. it is not as powerfull as a gtx670, but is available outside of asia. but anyway, the smaller form-factors are a great trend.
I like it a lot, and would have a Tiki myself if money (and living in other country) weren't a limiting factor. Reply
aguilpa1 - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkI don't see why this wouldn't work great. I got a GTX660 for work to run 4 monitors and I was surprised at how much of the card was wasted space and plastic shroud just jutting out to the side. It looks like they just consolidated the design and moved the cooler over. It shouldn't be much different than the regular one. Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkGood catch; the gallery picture only shows 4 (2xDVI, 1xHDMI, 1xDP) so I assume it's a typo. Reply
IanCutress - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkOne of the DVI is DVI-I, so with an adapter can do VGA as well. Do we count that as 5 outputs but only 4 connectors? Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkOnly if you can us a Y adapter to actually get DVI and VGA out at the same time. Reply
Death666Angel - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkIt has 5 outputs though. That doesn't mean you can use all 5 all the time. But that's always been the case. Just because you had 5 connectors on the back of your card or 4 on the motherboard does not mean you can use 4/5 monitors at the same time. Reply
extide - Saturday, March 09, 2013 - linkNo... it only has 4.... look at the pics lol. Reply
vicbdn - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkThat cooler doesn't seem particularly suited for m-itx enclosures. Would be better if it was a blower and vented out the back... Reply
SithSolo1 - Thursday, March 07, 2013 - linkBlower coolers by design are longer than the pcb so they can blow across the entire card. You cant have it both ways. Short card overall or blower style cooler, choose one. Reply
praeses - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkIf they ditched the second DVI port and replaced it with more venting to allow it to breathe better I would be more interested. If it's designed to live in a cramped area, it needs decent airflow without getting to noisy. I believe most people are interested in 2 or 3 displays anyways. Reply
Bobs_Your_Uncle - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkI've got to ask: Why hasn't anyone raised the possibility of liquid cooling the SFF 670 & probably looping in the cpu as well? I understand size constraints in a small chassis (and an external radiator kind of defeats the purpose) but I'm still getting up-to-speed with liquid cooling.
And please forgive me if this is an obviously dumb Noobian question; for the last 8 or 10 months I've been trying to get current with tech again after a pretty long time away (& I've undoubtedly learned more from reading AT posts, comments, forums, than I have anywhere else).
I'm asking because I've always wanted to try building as a hobbyist/enthusiast but was never able to pull the time & money together at the same time. I'm personally really liking the trend toward small & powerful, & I know my 17 year old son would REALLY get off on a Prodigy gaming build (& for college, which is probably 18 months or so out).
I'm thinking that a Mini-ITX with Virtu & a SFF 670 packed into a Prodigy should be able to deliver ample oomph (quantity & quality) to do what he will both need & want to do.
Thanks for your input. Reply
ShieTar - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkThe whole point of liquid cooling is getting large amounts of heat from a small source to a large radiator. For a modern non-overclocked Intel CPU it usually makes no sense at all, and even slightly overclocked GPUs can be kept silent with a good air-cooler in a good enclosure. Liquidcooling at first just adds additional power consumption and noise sources.
Liquid-cooling only starts making sense once you go for not-so-reasonable overclocking, when you need to remove 500W or more from your system. But once you do that, Mini-ITX boards are unlikely to make you happy due to somewhat restricted overclocking capabilities. Also you run into trouble cooling the chipset if your case is packed to the brim with coolers and tubes.
Of course for a college student living in a SFF enclosure himself a Prodigy-based gaming build is a nice concept. Then again I am surprised that ASUS did not start with a 660 and/or 660 Ti of this size, but went directly for the 670. The 400$ GPU is probably not aiming at college students and other persons living in small apartments. Reply
kenyee - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkif it's loud, it's not what HTPC users want...we don't want a whining jet engine in what was quiet/cool system... Reply
HisDivineOrder - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkI think this is the future of add-on's for computers. A lot of them are going to get smaller and smaller. I also think parts like this with high performance and low size are going to be very popular with the boutiques who like to make custom high performance PC's the size of consoles. Reply
michaelheath - Friday, March 08, 2013 - linkEver since I saw the PCB layout of the 670 and lower-end boards, I was hoping someday a manufacturer would be bold enough to take advantage of the shorter PCB. My hat is off to Asus for at least trying. Reply
MrX8503 - Saturday, March 09, 2013 - linkI went from an ATX to micro to mini itx. There's no need to have a tank sized gaming machine anymore. Hopefully smaller components will be the trend. Reply
vision33r - Saturday, March 09, 2013 - linkThe PC industry has not done enough to move hardware towards smaller form factors. While big water cooled rigs are cool to look at but they take a lot of space. It would be nice to have a mini rig that's as powerful as a big rig. Reply
DarkStryke - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - linkIt's already possible, you just need a motherboard that is built to overclock, like the Asus P8Z77-I DELUXE. Reply