Intel Ivy Bridge: Core i7-3770K, Core i5-3570K, HD Graphics 4000 and 2500 reviewed

Because of Intel's tick-tock philosophy the company is shipping the current Ivy Bridge generation for Desktop and also Mobile markets. But instead of a simple tick, what means a shrink of a established architecture, Intel calls it a tick+. This is due to the revised integrated graphics, but of course Ivy Bridge also delivers more CPU performance and a low power consumption.

The 22 nanometer process gives Intel the possibility to squeeze 1.4 billion transistor into an area of only 160 square millimeter in case of the 4 core plus GT2 top dog. All Core i7 and K CPUs contain this HD Graphics 4000 with 16 so-called Executions Units with reworked architecture while the Core i5 include the GT1 (HD Graphics 2500) with six EUs. In comparison with the Sandy Bridge graphics, Ivy Brige is a huge leap ahead in performance and image quality - Intel improved the anisotropic filtering. The HD 4000 is able to match up with AMDs Radeon HD 6410D while the HD 2500 isn't much faster than its predecessor HD 2000.

The raw CPU performance per clock is slightly higher than before and aside a faster all core turbo the Core i7-3770K and Core i5-3570K can't reach a huge advantage over the Core i7-2700K and Core i5-3570K. Only Skyrim and Starcraft 2 show up a gap of more than 10 percent - but both Ivy Bridge CPUs are able to outperform all current AMDs CPUs in gaming and mostly in applications too. TDP drops from 95 to 77 watts, our measuring indicates 9 to 13 watts lower power consumption for the whole system under load - AMDs fastest FX, the 8150, requires nearly two times the energy. So in a nutshell the Ivy Bridge CPU performance isn't impressive but wattage and - in case of a Intel iGPU - the graphics part are.

For further details check our (German) Intel Ivy Bridge review. In the gallery below you'll find all benchmarks and graphics comparisons.