Intel has just released brand new Ivy Bridge CPU architecture on 22nm. Although Intel has released 14 new mobile and desktop CPUs, we will focus on their flagship desktop CPU – the Core i7-3770K.  We will compare its performance in more than 20 games against our aging flagship 45nm Core i7-920 CPU at 4.2GHz by using an overclocked GTX 680 on both platforms. We will also look at the performance that Intel’s brand new premium DX11 HD 4000 graphics promises, compared to the now last generation of Sandy Bridge’s DX10 Core i3-2105 integrated HD 3000 Graphics at 1280×720 (720P).

Before we evaluated Intel’s Core i3-2105, our last major CPU evaluation introduced AMD’s new FX “Bulldozer” architecture as we focused on performance in 20 modern games. We compared AMD’s new 8-core flagship, the FX-8150, versus Intel’s overclocked Core i7-920 and the overclocked Phenom II 980 BE X4. We concluded that the FX-8150 required a lot of power and overclocking to beat the Phenom II and to approach the Core i7’s performance in gaming. This time, we are taking a look at Intel’s enthusiast-level new top LGA 1155 CPU, the quad-core, Core i7-3770K and we shall compare it in gaming against our quad-core, Core i7-920, overclocked as far as ours will go, to 4.2GHz.

Unfortunately we received our Core i7-3770K rather late, only 5 days before the NDA ended this morning.  We then had to scramble to get a suitable Series 7 motherboard as we were unable to get an updated BIOS for our ASRock Z68 Generation 3 Extreme 3 motherboard in time.  The new 22nm CPUs are a drop-in replacement for Sandy Bridge CPUs in Z68 motherboards with a BIOS update, and we shall compare performance to the new Z77 motherboard in an upcoming evaluation.

We purchased a micro-ATX Z77 Gigabyte motherboard from Amazon.com that is suitable for testing SLI and CrossFire at 8x+8x PCIe 3.0 specification in future evaluations.  It arrived this last Thursday evening, and we only had 3 days hands on with the new Intel platform.  This is just the beginning of our evaluation of the Core i7-3770K and we expect it will become our flagship platform for testing very fast multi-GPU graphics.

We notice that AMD’s new FX series is positioned against Sandy Bridge and especially against the 2500/2600K.  The Core i7-3770K is priced about $90 more than AMD’s flagship FX-8150, at $313.  In our comparison of FX-8150 with Core-i7-920, it took a strong overclock of the AMD CPU to 4.4GHz to barely match our Intel CPU at 4.0GHz.  Now we will see how the new Core i7-3770K compares – first at its stock speed of 3.5GHz and then overclocked to 4.2GHz to match our older CPU at clock-for-clock with both at 4.2GHz in gaming.

Core i7-3770K’s built-in HD  4000 Graphics

One important feature of Intel’s new Core i7 CPU is that Intel’s latest DX11 HD 4000 graphics is integrated directly into the CPU. This is a real convenience for Intel users as they no longer have to buy discrete graphics cards, to run the latest DX11 games or to run three displays for productivity.  AMD’s new APUs also provide Integrated Graphics (IG), while the older Phenom II and current FX processors do not. That means that you must buy a discreet video card or spend more for a motherboard with IG just to run your PC at all with Phenom II and FX processors.

The Sandy Bridge Core i3-2105 is a dual-core processor with HT enabled and it uses DX10 Intel HD 3000 Graphics with twelve execution units (EUs). The new HD 4000 graphics is now DX11 and it has 16 EUs operating at 1150MHz in the Core i7-3770K.

Buying a discrete video card is never an issue for PC gamers as integrated graphics (IG) performance is never sufficient for them. However, we will benchmark our Core i7-3770K’s integrated HD 4000 graphics versus Core i3’s HD 3000 Graphics at 720P so that our readers will know what to expect in light gaming.  We already found that the Core i3’s HD 3000 graphics is also very useful for watching HD video and/or to troubleshoot your discrete video and we are interested to see what Intel’s upgraded HD 4000 graphics bring in terms of performance.

The Core Ivy Bridge i7 Architecture

The 3rd Generation Intel Core processor family is the next generation of desktop 64-bit, multi-core processors built on 22-nanometer process technology. The processors are designed for a two-chip platform. The two-chip platform consists of a processor and a Platform Controller Hub (PCH) and enables higher performance at a lower lower cost, including energy consumption.  The Core i7-3770K processor includes Integrated Display Engine, Processor Graphics, PCI Express ports, and an Integrated Memory Controller.  This top processor offers 16 graphic execution units (EUs), an improvement over HD 3000’s 12 EUs.

The Core i7-3770K processor is offered in an 1155-land LGA package (H2). Here is an example of the Ivy Bridge desktop platform block diagram.

We are benching using the GTX 680 on both platforms to give you a comparison of our two CPUs’ scaling in games at 1920×1200 and 2560×1600 resolutions and at the maximum details that gamers play at. The GTX 680 is the most powerful single-GPU stock card available and we have also overclocked it as far as it will go to compare CPU scaling with stock and overclocked graphics.

The Core i7-3770K has four identical 3.5GHz Ivy Bridge cores, and is rated at a TDP of 77W. As with the other Ivy Bridge Core i7 CPUs, they have a large pool of shared L3 cache, along with four L2 cache pools (one for each core) and a pair of dedicated pools of L1 cache (again, one per core).

Probably the main advantage offered by Ivy Bridge’s Core i7-3770K is its incredible power savings features on the 22nm process.  Ivy Bridge is a refinement of Sandy Bridge and a node shrink that should give us some performance improvement over last generation along with a lot of power savings and new features, including being able to drive 3 displays at once.  A lot of the new significant improvements have been made to the HD graphics over last generation and we shall focus on it.

The Chipsets – Z68 versus Z77

The Z77 chipset is the premium chipset for Ivy Bridge including Core i7 which supports both CPU multiplier and IGP overclocking (for unlocked Intel CPUs), Quick Sync, and SATA 6.0Gbps as well as PCIe 3.0. It also supports Intel Virtu Technology, which uses the IG for less demanding tasks and the discrete GPU for more intensive applications, saving energy. With this chipset, Intel has further refined their Smart Response (SSD caching).

The ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Generation3 LGA 1155 motherboard which we purchased from Newegg for $125, is a very full-featured and is excellent bang-for-buck but has not yet had its BIOS updated for the new Ivy Bridge CPUs.  Like most Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 motherboards, it currently supports 8x+8x PCIe 2.0 specification for SLI and CrossFire.  In contrast, the Gigabyte Z77 motherboard that we purchased from Amazon.com, supports the higher bandwidth of the PCIe specification for 8x+8x PCIe 3.0 and it should make a difference to performance with multi-GPU setups.

Specifications

Here are the i7-3770K specifications from Intel’s site:

Head over to the next page and we’ll find more out about the new Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K.

Integrated HD 3000 vs HD 4000 Graphics and Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge  vs. the older Core i7-920 – in gaming

This evaluation is focused on the Core i7-3770K in gaming. And since there are integrated HD 4000 Graphics built into the CPU, we will also bench it using it at low details and a low 720p resolution and compare it to Sandy Bridge HD 3000 Graphics at the same settings.  We are also going to examine the value of upgrading from our older super-overclocked i7-920 to the new Ivy Bridge CPU, using a stock and overclocked GTX 680.

If you look at many other tech sites, they benchmark the Intel CPUs by using low to medium details and at low to medium resolutions with just a few games – something that few gamers can relate to. Instead, let’s give you practical gaming results at the highest resolution that most gamers play at and with the highest details and highest levels of anti-aliasing that each game allows with an overclocked GTX 680. Of course, we will benchmark more than twenty modern games to give you a good feel for what to expect from our two test CPU platforms and if it is worth upgrading to the new Ivy Bridge platform.

Overclocking

Core i7-3770″K” CPUs are multiplier unlocked and can easily be overclocked to well in excess of 4GHz. On the other hand, the Core i3-2105 is locked and cannot be overclocked in the traditional manner. Only the base clock may be overclocked which overclocks the entire system. Overclocks of 3-5+% with stability are reported and there can be a small performance boost.  The Core i7-3770K also has an unlocked base clock although we did not attempt to adjust it.

We used the very latest version of OCCT to test the thermal stability of our new CPU.  Here is the Core i7-3770K at idle at 4.2GHz.  The temperatures are only at  most 1-2 degrees Centigrade over stock speed.  Please note that an older version of the Cooler Master Hyper N212 was used and it is an entry-level aftermarket cooling solution.

Now let’s look at the stock results with all the cores maxed out:

Not bad.  Let’s increase our clocks to 4.2GHz and run the stress test again.  We make sure that our GTX 680 is also overclocked.

Temperatures have only gone up a few degrees – and this is with a very entry-level CPU cooler.  There is much hope for raising the clocks further and we will return to this immediately in Part 2 of our evaluation when we overclock the Core i7-3770K as far as it will go on air with our Noctua NH-DH14 CPU cooler.

 

HD 3000 vs HD 4000 Graphics

Let’s look at the HD 3000 Graphics and as you can see CPU-z is misidentifying the graphics as 2000; it is HD 3000 and you will see its performance in light gaming compared to Ivy’s HD 4000 Graphics.

HD 4000 Graphics control panel looks much the same.

Power Draw

We kept an eye on power and the Core i7-3770K kept within its specified TDP of 77W at its stock clocks. It is a very cool-running CPU and any cooler should be able to keep it cool. After we received our Core i7-3770K from Intel, we used our Cooler Master Hyper N-212 CPU cooler which we reviewed here. We also had to scramble for a CPU cooling fan, however, as we are running 4 PC systems simultaneously. We settled on a 140mm ultra-silent Noctua NF-P14 FLX fan which we paper-clipped (securely) to the Cooler Master cooler.

This Core i7-3770K is ideal for a very powerful PC as well as for a Home Theater PC (HTPC). With such a light power draw of only 77W, it does not need much in the way of cooling. On the other hand, the AMD FX series draws much more power and is not very well-suited for HTPC except perhaps for their lowest-end SKUs.

Please continue on to the next page for the complete hardware and software setup of our platforms – Core i7-3770K versus our overclocked Core i7-920. .

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-3770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 3.9GHz; also overclocked to 4.2GHz; DX11 CPU graphics), supplied by Intel.
• Intel Core i7-920 (reference 2.66GHz, overclocked to 4.2GHz using the 21x multiplier; Turbo boost and HT are on)
• Intel Core i3-2105 (3.1GHz, Turbo boost and HT are on; HD 3000 DX10 CPU graphics)
• ASRock Extreme3 Generation3 motherboard (Intel z68 chipset, latest beta (03/05/2012) BIOS, PCIe 2.0/3.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x PCIe 2.0)
• Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-DH3 Series 7 mATX motherboard (shipping BIOS, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P x58 motherboard (latest BIOS, USB 2.0, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, dual- and tri-channel at 1333 and 1200MHz; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTX 680, 2 GB (1006/3006MHz and also overclocked to 1156/3581MHz), supplied by Nvidia
• Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Frio OCK CPU cooler for Core i7-920 supplied by Thermaltake
• Cooler Master Elite 430 Case, supplied by Coolermaster
• Cooler Master Hyper N212 CPU cooler used for the i7-3770K and i3-2105, supplied by Cooler Master
• Philips DVD SATA writer/Sony DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD.

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce WHQL 300.10 drivers used for the GTX 5680; latest Intel drivers for HD 3000 Graphics and Chipset from Intel website; latest drivers for HD 4000 and shipping drivers for Series 7 motherboard.
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• VSync is  off in the control panel.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied if possible; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average rates as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The benchmarks

The Game benchmarks

• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Serious Sam, Second Encounter HD (2010)
• Serious Sam 3, BFE
• Wolfenstein
• Left 4 Dead
•  Left 4 Dead 2
• Crysis
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 2
• Just Cause 2
• Resident Evil 5
• Alien vs. Predator
• Battleforge
• STALKER, Call of Pripyat
• F1 2010
• Metro 2033
• Lost Planet 2
• H.A.W.X. 2
• Civilization 5
• Total War: Shogun II
• Dirt 3
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Batman: Arkham City

Other Tests

• Super Pi
• Fritz Chess Bench
• Custom PC Benchmark
• Cinebench
• x264 HD

Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks

• Heaven 2
• Vantage
• 3DMark11

We have got an interesting project going. First we look at synthetic and real world benches before we head for gaming results.

More Tests

 

Super Pi

Here is Super Pi on the Core i7-3770K at 4.2GHz

And now the Core i7-920 also at 4.2GHz.

Ivy is faster by a second.  And this is a single-threaded application.  Please continue on to Fritz Chess Bench.

Fritz Chess Bench

Fritz Chess Benchmark is found within the game’s program files and basically it crunches numbers to test your processor’s speed. Deep Fritz takes advantage of massive calculations and multi-threaded performance to work any CPU fully. It loads all threads 100% and will drive your CPU temperatures way up.

Besides showing relative speed when compared to a P3 1.0GHz CPU, it also shows the nodes completed. The faster your CPU, the more nodes completed. First up is the Core i7-3770K at 4.2GHz.

Next the Core i7-920 also at 4.2GH

Here in a multi-threaded benchmark, Ivy Bridge at 4.2GHz is faster clock-for-clock than our aging and overclocked-to-the-max Core i7-920.

CustomPC Benchmark

CustomPC benchmark use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests themselves are not synthetic benchmarks but instead they use real world image, video and multi-tasking tasks to test the performance of your computer.

The tests are:

• GIMP Image Editing
• H.264 Video Encoding
• Multi-tasking

As usual we test with the Core i7-3770K first at 4.2GHz.

Now the same tests are repeated on the overclocked to 4.2GHz Core i7-920.

Ivy Bridge is much faster at video encoding while our older CPU is faster at multi-tasking and image editing.

CINEBENCH

CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest 11.5 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically.

First up, the Ivy Bridge Core i7 at 4.2GHz with the overclocked GTX 680.

 Now the i7-920 at 4.2GHz with the GTX 680 also overclocked: 

Ivy Bridge is much faster in both tests.

X264

Basically this test encodes a HD video clip into a x264 video file. The first pass is very quick and the second one is much slower and much more demanding of a task as it does the actual encoding. This benchmark is heavily mult-threaded.  First up is the Core i7-3770K.

And now the Core i7-920 at 4.2GHz.

As we can see, both passes are much quicker on Ivy Bridge.  The newest architecture is favored in a heavily-multi-threaded task.

Game-related benchmarks

The synthetics

3DMark 11 and Vantage are useful tests to track changes within the same system and they are often used to give a rough comparison between platforms.

Vantage

First up we look at Vantage and HD 4000 Graphics.

It isn’t terribly impresive especially compared to a GTX 680; here are the results with the CPU and GPU both at stock settings:

Now we overclock our Core i7-3770K to 4.2GHz and our GTX 680 speeds are increased to their maximum without added voltage by +150MHz on the core and +575MHz on the memory clocks::

Now let’s look at 3D Mark 11.  First up, HD 4000 CPU graphics:

Now lets check out the score with an overclocked GTX 680 and with our Core i7-3770K:

Let’s look at Intel HD graphics performance:

HD 3000 versus HD 4000 CPU graphics

The improvement over HD 3000 Graphics is significant.  Finally, DX9 and DX10 games can play relatively smoothly at 720P and DX11 is a possiblity using HD 4000 graphics.  Shogun II had issues since the recent 5GB patch and we could not run it at all with our GTX 680 as its hardware was being misidentified in the game.

Now let’s compare our overclocked Core i7-920 versus our Ivy Bridge i7-3770K using a GTX 680 at both stock and also overclocked speeds.

The Game Benchmarks with the GTX 680

Here are the benches for the Core i7-920 at 4.2GHz versus Core i7-3770 at stock 3.5GHz and at 4.2GHz; the stock speed turbos to 3.9GHz so our overclock to 4.2GHz is mild.  All games have their setting completely maxed out and levels of AA are identified on the chart.

The first results colums is the Ivy Bridge i7-3700K at stock paired with a stock GTX 680 versus the Core i7-920 at 4.2GHz with the same stock GTX 680.  The third column is the Core i7-3700K with an overclocked GTX 680 versus the Core i7-920/overclocked GTX 680 in the 4th column.  Finally, the last column is the Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.2GHz paired with the overclocked GTX 680.

 

As you can see, the stock Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K trades blows with the highly overclocked Core i7-920, and when Ivy Bridge is overclocked to 4.2GHz – only +300MHz above the Turbo boost speed of 3.9GHz – it pulls away from the older CPU in games that are not GPU-limited.   There are some oddities that we experienced with drivers and games besides with Shogun II.  F1 2010 had artifacting and a couple of other games rather strangely favor the older platform.  We will continue to track this as our evaluation continues this week.

We can’t wait to find the maximum overclock of our Core i7-3770K using our new Noctua flagship CPU Cooler, the NH-DH14.  We expect that except for GPU-limited games, we will leave our old platform in the dust!

Let’s head for our conclusion.

 

Conclusion

It is clear to us that our highly overclocked Core i7-920 solution is nearing the end of it’s useful life as our flagship.   We simply cannot push it further without exotic watercooling and the new Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K easily replaces it – at stock speeds!  We also note that we did not even attempt a higher overclock than 4.2GHz for the new processor as our time with it until now is way too limited.  We deliberately chose our lowest-end CPU cooler, and temperatures are still quite reasonable with a mild overclock.  With a better cooler, such as our Noctua NH-DH14, we expect to push the clockspeeds well in excess of 4.5GHz.

We held back on upgrading to Sandy Bridge last year, partly because our X58 motherboard supports the full PCIe 2.0 16x+16x specification whereas Sandy Bridge is 8x+8x PCIe 2.0.  Now that the PCIe bandwidth has been increased, 8x+8x PCIe 3.0 offers no disadvantage whatsoever and we look forward to a future comparison between the two specifications using GTX 680 SLI.

It now remains to be seen if AMD will be again competitive in the midrange as their new bulldozer FX architecture is barely able to compete with Sandy Bridge – at the costs of using much more power. AMD really need to get their clockspeed much higher and their own roadmap indicates that they expect 10 to 15% more performance with “Piledriver” just to remain competitive with Intel.

Intel’s CPUs are powerful and even their entry-level Sandy Bridge Core i3-2105 offers a good value in gaming.  The complaints with HD 3000 Graphics have been mostly been addressed for light gaming by HD 4000, although most DX11 games are still too demanding to run at good framerates even at a relatively low resolution.

Paired with a powerful video card like the GTX 680, the Core i7-3770K is the perfect match for high-end gaming and even multi-GPU. Best of all, there is a great upgrade path with Ivy Bridge Socket 1155 if you already have a Z68 motherboard as Intel’s next generation CPUs are a drop-in upgrade with a BIOS update for those currently with lower-end Sandy Bridge processors.  And some other older Sandy Bridge motherboards are also compatible, although perhaps with less than full functionality.  Or one can opt for one the very latest Series 7 motherboard which we will compare to Z68 platform in a future evaluation.

Core i7-3770K Pros and Cons

Pros

• Core i7-3770K offers a great experience for gaming when paired with a capable video card
• Intel’s HD 4000 IG is sufficient for light 720p DX 11 gaming and is very useful by itself for a second or even a third display, or to troubleshoot PCIe graphics.
• USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 are important upgrades for speed and fast multi-video card graphics.
• Power consumption is fantastic at only 77W compared to nearly double that of its competition.
• Not much in the way of cooling fans are required to cool it and an Ivy Bridge CPU would be the foundation of a great platform for a powerful HTPC (home theater PC).
• Overclocking is easy and there appears to be a lot of headroom to increase performance.
• In multi-tasking, encoding and most other tasks, the Ivy Bridge architecture is much faster clock-for-clock than Core i7-920.

Cons

• None

We believe that Intel’s new Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K by virtue of its included HD 4000 Graphics and a very powerful quad-core processor complimented by Hyper-Threading, offers great features while saving energy.  It is highly recommended even though we have not yet completed our evaluation of it.

Make sure you follow us on our ABT forum. You will get the very latest news about Core i7-3770K and upcoming new graphics cards.  We will continue to benchmark our new CPU and you can also help us on the forum and make suggestions for future evaluations.

Happy Gaming!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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«1. Core i7-3770k Introduction2. Core i7-3770K features3. Test Configuration4. More Benchmarks5. Gaming Benchmarks6. Conclusion7. View All»