The anticipated Intel i7-4770K is previewed and compared to Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge processors.
The release of Intel’s CPU update is antipicated, but much like with the Ivybridge platform it’s more of a logical step forward than a complete redesign. It’s looking very promising. Further improvements have been made to the power efficiency of the CPU, and of course – better performance too. Tomshadware have been lucky enough to grab a preview of the chip (this one being the Haswell I7-4770K).
Like you’d expect, it’s a 4 core 8 thread chip, but there have been numerous improvements made to both the CPU and on the onboard GPU. The 1150 socket supports a plethora of goodies, including DDR3-1600 RAM at 1.5 V and 800 MHz minimum core frequencies, and also a 16-lane PCI Express 3.0 controller, AVX2 support, and AES-NI support.
Performance of the 4770K is impressive – getting very close to the performance of the 6 core Sandbridge-E chips.
It’s a very impressicve result for the 4770K to say the least.
3D Studio Max heavily taxes all CPU cores, and the I7-4770K just cannot match the 6 core offering of the 3970K. It does however, offer the same jump in performance from Ivybridge as Ivybridge to Sandybridge.
In tests the Intel Haswell seems around 7 to 13 percent faster than the current Ivybridge range – however, the reason reason people go for the “k” variant of the chips is to overclock them. Many were disappointed at the jump from the 32nm of sandbridge to the 22 of Ivy. Overclocking was no better – and in some cases, worse. Therefore many felt that if they already owned a heavily overclocked 2500K or 2600K there was little reason to upgrade.
The other issue is of course, that if you want the 1150 platform, complete with all of the latest offerings, including: six SATA 6Gb/s ports and six USB 3.0 ports (so that’s 14 ports total, if you choose to include the USB 2.0 too). The real question for many is how much extra it’ll overclock – and if around 20 percent performance increase will be worth all the cash to upgrade.
Intel Haswell is appearing very impressive however – but it isn’t the performance jump like when the Sandybridge chips were first introduced. But then, you can’t expect it to be. There is one thing to consider however – Broadwell. Intel’s successor to Haswell will mark the first BGA only chip line. BGA meaning that you will buy it pre-soldered onto the motherboard. I personally don’t like this idea at all, due to the huge drop in flexibility. I am hoping that AMD will be able to counter this. There are some who believe that the successor to Broadwell (SkyDrake) will possibly see a return of the ‘standard’ sockets that we’re used to seeing.
