Intel Officially Lifts the Veil On Ivy Bridge

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Intel Officially Lifts the Veil On Ivy Bridge

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 23, 2012 @05:07AM from the check-it-out dept.

New submitter zackmerles writes "Tom's Hardware takes the newly-released, top-of-the-line Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K for a spin. All Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPUs come with Intel HD Graphics 4000, which despite the DirectX 11 support, only provides a modest boost to the Sandy Bridge Intel HD Graphics 3000. However, the new architecture tops the charts for low power consumption, which should make the Ivy Bridge mobile offerings more desirable. In CPU performance, the new Ivy Bridge Core i7 is only marginally better than last generation's Core i7-2700K. Essentially, Ivy Bridge is not the fantastic follow-up to Sandy Bridge that many enthusiasts had hoped for, but an incremental improvement. In the end, those desktop users who decided to skip Sandy Bridge to hold out for Ivy Bridge, probably shouldn't have. On the other hand, since Intel priced the new Core i7-3770K and Core i5-3570K the same as their Sandy Bridge counterparts, there is no reason to purchase the previous generation chips." Reader jjslash points out that coverage is available from all the usual suspects — pick your favorite: AnandTech, TechSpot, Hot Hardware, ExtremeTech, and Overclockers.

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Let me get this straight... by girlintraining · 2012-04-23 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

So, Intel, a company with no real competition right now in the market, has produced a product that offers only a very slight performance boost, and relied on tons of marketing to drum up anticipation for this mediocre offering. And then priced it the same as existing offerings as an apology to those who waited. Actually, that sounds about par for the course these days. The only real news in cpus and motherboards has been that they've gone multicore and continue to increase bandwidth. And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.

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1. Re:Let me get this straight... by I.M.O.G. · 2012-04-23 05:20 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  For people familiar with Intel's Tick-Tock cadence - this should not come as much surprise. Some people may have gotten caught up in marketing and expected more, but this is a "Tick" which brings a process shrink, power savings, and a modest performance increase. It is just about delivering that, though perhaps on the softer side of things.
  Sandy Bridge was a Tock - a BIG performance improvement. Haswell should be a Tock - a BIG performance improvement.
  On the tick, they set more modest performance goals, and focus on getting the process shrink right and tuning things up. On the tock, they should knock our socks off. So maybe Ivy Bridge is disappointing, but perhaps familiarity with their product development strategy helps to manage expectations
  
  --
  Overclockers
2. Re:Let me get this straight... by SJHillman · 2012-04-23 05:25 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Sounds a little like Microsoft's method.
  Win 95 - Tock
  Win 98 - Tick
  Win Me - Sproing
  Win 2000 - Tock
  Win XP - Tock
  XP SP1 - Tick
  XP SP2 - Tock
  XP SP3 - Tick
  Vista - Tock sprooooing
  Win 7 - Tick
  Win 8 - Tock (maybe)
3. Re:Let me get this straight... by timeOday · 2012-04-23 05:31 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  A 50% GPU improvement over Sandy Bridge is VERY significant.
4. Re:Let me get this straight... by I.M.O.G. · 2012-04-23 05:44 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  ZankerH, I appreciate the comment, but you've actually got it backwards. The tick is a new shrink, the tock is a new architecture: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/intel-tick-tock-model-general.html
  
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  Overclockers
5. Re:Let me get this straight... by 0123456 · 2012-04-23 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A 50% GPU improvement over Sandy Bridge is VERY significant.
  Not particularly. A 50% faster GPU will still suck for gamers and will be irrelevant to non-gamers.
6. Re:Let me get this straight... by ifiwereasculptor · 2012-04-23 05:47 · Score: 2
  
  Very significant for Intel, not for users. AMD is leading in that segment by far, still being the only relevant option in integrated graphics. And Trinity will only widen that gap. Sandy Bridge was already enough for desktop effects, video playback and legacy gaming, and Ivy is good for exactly the same things. The performance gains, impressive as they are (50% is a major leap) aren't that significant for any of those tasks nor improve serious usage by a lot. And, given that Llano has far superior performance in integrated graphics and is merely acceptable for anything intense, I'd say HD4000 still isn't good enough.
7. Re:Let me get this straight... by Glasswire · 2012-04-23 05:48 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No, Tocks (Penryn, Nehalem, SandyB, Haswell) are new architecture, Ticks (Merom, Westmere, IvyBridge, Haswell-sucessor-on-next-gen-XXnm-process) are updated architecture on new process.
8. Re:Let me get this straight... by devman · 2012-04-23 05:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Where is the (-5 Wrong) moderation when you need it. You can verify that Ivy Bridge is, in fact, a tick by looking at any of the linked reviews, Intel's own marketing, or wikipedia.
  
  Hopefully meta mods are paying attention to this one.
9. Re:Let me get this straight... by Jeremi · 2012-04-23 05:52 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.
  Is it really because they can't squeeze out more performance, or is it because decreased energy consumption is primarily what consumers are demanding these days?
  I can't remember the last time I heard anyone complaining about their CPU being too slow (barring software problems), but people still wish their laptop/tablet had longer battery life.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
10. Re:Let me get this straight... by gman003 · 2012-04-23 05:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Yes, IB isn't a massive improvement on SB. But it's also worth stating what Intel did right:
  Same price
  Compatible with old sockets/motherboards
  And who said every generation of processors had to be a significant improvement? Toyota puts out essentially the same car every year for a decade, with only minor, incremental improvements. There's no reason why you can't do the same for processors. The only downside is for people who like to brag about having the very-latest processor.
  Personally, I'm going to be grabbing an Ivy Bridge laptop, if only because my old, reliable Core 2 laptop finally died. And I'll probably skip over Haswell, maybe Broadwell too, before upgrading again.
  Long story short, if you've got a Sandy Bridge, you don't need to upgrade yet. If you've got a Nehalem and some spare cash, an upgrade may (or may not) be useful. If you're on something before that, IB is the chip to upgrade to.
  PS: I'm not really a fanboy for either company (I've used both extensively - the Phenom's were great, and even my old Athlon 900 still sees service now and again), but AMD really doesn't have any attractive higher-end options. The Fusion processors look good compared to Intel's low-power options, though - I seriously considered getting a small Fusion laptop and then building a more powerful SB or IB desktop at home, but decided single-device was better.
11. Re:Let me get this straight... by LordLimecat · 2012-04-23 06:18 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Except the summary seems wrong by its own sources:
  TechSpot
  
  Since late last year Ivy Bridge seems to be the architecture everyone is waiting for. Although Intel is only anticipating a 10–15% processing performance bump when compared to Sandy Bridge,
  Which is what they have been saying for about a year now, and what everyone expected. And for the record, 15% speed boost at the same clock with lower power usage is not insignificant, at all.
  AnandTech:
  
  Ivy Bridge is a tick+, as we've already established. ... The end result is a reasonable increase in CPU performance (for a tick), a big step in GPU performance, and a decrease in power consumption.
  SemiAccurate:
  
  For raw numbers, the top HD 4000 only has 16 shaders, but the underlying architecture is completely new. .....Intel is claiming about 2x the graphics performance from 33% more units. We don't think these claims are out of line for the general case.
  Way to go, summary, you successfully implied that the chip was a flop when your sources indicate it hit its target, has substantially better GPU performance, and has a launch price in line with its current lineup. Slashdot truly is master of the art of spin.
12. Re:Let me get this straight... by LordLimecat · 2012-04-23 06:27 · Score: 2
  
  Higher clockspeeds use more power. Intel hasnt gone much above 3.3gHz for years, with 3.7 (i believe) being the top clock rate that they have ever done. You expect them to change that now when the focus is on higher efficiency, more cores, and lower power usage?
  It doesnt represent a problem at all, and for the record all of the benchmarks ive seen on hothardware (linky) show it as being faster than sandy bridge, so theres that speedup youre complaining about.
  They never said that there would be a clock boost-- id be interested to see what your source is for that statement.
13. Re:Let me get this straight... by Calos · 2012-04-23 07:06 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  ower efficiency? OK, all missing in action.
  Per some of the articles, power consumption is down nearly 20W between the two generations.
  So, the big unwritten subtext here is: Intel's 22nm node has got problems. Big problems. Trigate not working out so well?
  Far too early to tell. The fact that they introduced a brand new, immensely complex process into manufacturing and it is working so well actually says a lot of good about how the trigate process is fairing. It will, of course, need some tuning and massaging. But it is already performing as well as/slightly better than the previous generation on its first release, at lower power (at least per Anand).
  IVB is also farking small, which as the process matures, should mean more parts and lower prices.
  
  --
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14. Re:Let me get this straight... by Tough+Love · 2012-04-23 07:07 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I know this is how intel defines it, but that's always seemed odd to me. Tick comes before tock. A new architecture comes before the refinement of that architecture. Seems like the tick should be the new architecture. and the tock should be the refinement.
  It should come as no surprise given that Intel also got the order of bytes in a word backwards.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
15. Re:Let me get this straight... by Tough+Love · 2012-04-23 07:12 · Score: 2
  
  And, oh yes, I am underwhelmed by the "tick". On the face of it, Intel would have accomplished more with another go around at 28nm.
  Now for the Intel fanboys in the thread, let's shed some authoritative light on the subject.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
16. Re:Let me get this straight... by Tough+Love · 2012-04-23 07:17 · Score: 2
  
  A 50% GPU improvement over Sandy Bridge is VERY significant.
  Compared to other Intel. But compared to AMD and NVidia it still sucks major donkey poo.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
17. Re:Let me get this straight... by hairyfeet · 2012-04-23 09:04 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well there HAS been some innovation, just not much. Intel finally accepted that truly piss poor graphics simply won't cut it (although I still wouldn't consider them great, they are a lot better than say the 945 shitpiles they used to push) and of course what AMD is doing is showing a shift in direction, pairing more minimal CPUs like Bobcat with a much more powerful GPU.
  And THAT to me is the real question we are gonna see answered in the next couple of years, is the GPU or CPU more important in mobile? the interesting thing is both Intel and AMD has chosen a different side of the debate and they both have interesting points. AMD believes that with A/V and gaming the push should be on the GPU which on the consumer side makes sense as the home users are much more likely to be watching HD movies than say working a large spreadsheet while Intel believes that with an uber powerful CPU the GPU frankly doesn't have to be that great and they too have a point as many of the jobs the GPU does can be done by the CPU if it has enough cycles.
  Personally I believe what we are gonna end up with is a split, with AMD taking the home users who are more price sensitive and more multimedia heavy while Intel takes the workstation and business users who are more likely to be doing CPU heavy tasks. I have been noticing this trend in the B&M stores where all the consumer machines, both desktop and laptop, are AMD Fusion whereas the business section is dominated by Core based laptops.
  But in any case the next couple of years will be interesting to watch. I just hope AMD is able to keep a horse in the race as we have seen in the past how terrible a monopoly is on a market and the whole Intel tick/tock strategy didn't really come about until they got worried about the Athlon. Intel can afford to coast for the most part and simply concentrate on lowering the power of what they already have as there hasn't been a "killer app" that has needed more power in quite awhile, whereas AMD has a real turkey with bulldozer and the moron that killed Thuban left them with no real alternatives other than bobcat so if they don't either come out with a new design or fix faildozer they could end up toast.
  All I know is as a system builder when i can't get any more socket AM3 chips I'll be going to Intel, bulldozer really is a bad chip, as bad if not worse than Phenom I. Its too expensive, its a bunch of triples and quads with hardware accelerated hyperthreading they are having to sell as hexas and octos because of how high the chips cost to make, and the performance actually improves when you kill hyperthreading. As much as I love competition anyone with eyes can see even an Intel dual Sandy frankly curb stomps bulldozer and i'm sure ivy will just make that beat down even more obvious. Congrats Intel designers, you have a killer design on your hands.
  
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18. Re:Let me get this straight... by LordLimecat · 2012-04-23 09:12 · Score: 2
  
  vWell, where did the clock boost go then?
  
  Normally, also a speedup due to additional superscalar hardware, but Intel explained that one away as "improved graphics".
  
  Your words, not mine. You wanted a clockboost (which they really havent done for about 6 years now, and did not promise), and a speedup (which they delivered). You claimed that power efficiency is, to quote your post, "missing in action" (even though it isnt).
  You seem to have assumed they reneged on all their promises despite the reality of the situation, for no other apparent reason than that you wanted something to rail about. Possibly check the sources before buying into the slashdot spin bs.
19. Re:Let me get this straight... by Vegemeister · 2012-04-23 09:27 · Score: 2
  
  I'm not a big fan of x86, but I think Intel got endianness right.
  
  Consider a single byte. We call the low bit, which contributes 2^0, 'bit 0'. We call the high bit, which contributes 2^7, 'bit 7'. Why shoud we not use the same order for larger constructions?
  
  In a little endian word, bit n is in the (n/8)th byte. Big endian is just weird.
20. Re:Let me get this straight... by Vegemeister · 2012-04-23 09:35 · Score: 2
  
  GP is referring to maximum frequency, which is less on Ivy because of the increased thermal density. (The size of the die shrunk more than the power consumption did.)
21. Re:Let me get this straight... by gstrickler · 2012-04-23 09:55 · Score: 2
  
  It offers a significant power reduction (~22%), plus a slight boost in IPC, same clock rates, and a notable boost in IGP performance (~30%). For instance, i7 3770K (77W TDP, and HD 4000) vs i7 2700K (95W TDP and HD 3000). Both are quad core, 8 thread, 3.5GHz with max turbo of 3.9GHz, and 8MB L3 cache. On the mobile CPU side, a new i7 3612QM, 35W quad core, 8 thread, 6MB L3 cache, and HD 4000 graphics, compared to at least 45W TDP on all prior quad core mobile i7 CPUs (with slower IGP).
  
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22. Re:Let me get this straight... by Fussen · 2012-04-23 10:21 · Score: 2
  
  I have been waiting for the ivy bridge to be released in the macbook pro because power draw is huge when on batteries.
  
  But a "tock" which I feel nobody has mentioned and is almost the sole reason why I am patiently waiting for the next MBP is 4K screen resolution. I feel that "retina display" type dpi becomes possible with this feature. The next release of OS X shows development to utilize 4K potential.
  
  Gaming may be poor performance since GPUs may have to get a substantial overhaul and nobody probably has a desktop screen that does 4096x2304 pixels. What it does afford presently is editing 1:1 1080p footage with room for an editing interface.
  
  Or was this removed?? Is this why nobody is talking about it?
  
  http://vr-zone.com/articles/post-idf-bites-ivy-bridge-gpu-to-support-4kx4k-displays-/13584.html
  
  Oh yeah, just about forgot; something else that ivy bridge affords: Thunderbolt, for what it's worth.
23. Re:Let me get this straight... by hairyfeet · 2012-04-23 14:35 · Score: 2
  
  Which is why I'm starting to wonder if we haven't just about reached as far as we can go, at least as far as single chips that is. I mean there is still some room with Bobcat style designs, where you make a simpler CPU and then you could add more cores, i personally would love say a sub 25 watt 6 core bobcat with a low midrange GPU built in, but even that will only buy you a few more years.
  Personally I can see a day coming when people only buy a PC when the previous one dies. I know that in my own family we have already reached this point, my GF has a triple core that probably spends 85% of its time barely above idle as the most intensive thing she does is FB games, even with me and my two boys being what most would call "hardcore' gamers I just don't see any games coming down the pipe that will cause us to have to replace the two hexacores and the quad anytime soon, just maybe replacing the HD4850s we currently run for some HD5850 or HD6850s when the price drops, and honestly even playing shooters I rarely see more than 2 cores of my hexacore getting stressed.
  So I have to wonder if in 5 years either Intel or AMD will be able to come up with enough changes to make an announcement like TFA even worth noting. We have pretty much hit the wall on MHz, I've found for consumers pretty much anything dual or better will spend more time idling than under load, hell even my low end E350 netbook is more than adequate for any tasks I have on the road, so throwing more cores is basically for ePeen bragging rights more than anything, and as you pointed out they are reaching pretty damned near the limit on shrinkage, so where to go? the apps certainly aren't keeping up with CPU power anymore and if the specs on the PS4 are to be believed even the next gen consoles will be about like a midrange desktop 3 years ago, so where?
  While it may not be good for the chip makers i have to say i'm currently enjoying the hell out of this "golden age" of computing, where I can enjoy even the latest games on 3 year old hardware with great graphics and in everything I do I have cycles to spare. I just don't see anything coming down the pipe that would get me truly excited for the new chips, it does look like we are about to hit another plateau.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
24. Re:Let me get this straight... by drhank1980 · 2012-04-23 16:23 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I saw a presentation a couple years ago at SPIE that has Intel showing cross sections from a sub 10nm process. They had completely wrapped the gate around the device to get those to work so the transistors were just tubes. In the same presentation, they were also showing that the current / voltage improvements between the 32nm node and the 22nm node were much more like the improvements from the 130nm to the 90nm nodes (65nm to 45nm to 32nm have all leaked too much to get much bang for the buck on the shrinks), so theoretically the next generation 22nm Haswell may see some clock improvements again but we will have to see as there are significant challenges in shrinking the 1st layer of metal interconnect that may sink any improvements in the transistor performance.
  
  Also at this same conference the TSMC CEO was very confident that they could make devices that worked well at 7-8nm; the real question was could you manufacture those in a cost effective way as EUV lithography is too slow and going to triple pattern 193nm immersion is going to to be very expensive.
25. Re:Let me get this straight... by cheesybagel · 2012-04-23 20:35 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Leakage was handled in several ways. Materials technology in semiconductor manufacturing (in particular CPU manufacturing) advanced a lot in the last decade and a half. It used to be chips were all made from polysilicon. Eventually as the transistors got smaller closer to the nanoscale there was work done on new materials (so called low-k and high-k materials). You probably heard about names such as Black Diamond low-k or Hafnium high-k (aka metal gates) along the way. These reduced the leakage issue. Instead of using aluminum for the wires today we use copper to reduce power consumption because copper is a better conductor. Then there is germanium doping to produce so called 'strained silicon' so that the silicon atoms are further apart to improve electron mobility. Taking these material changes and a couple of design changes today's processors are clocking higher than they were 10 years ago even if not at the rate Intel used to predict back then. You probably noticed by now we are either hitting or close to hitting 4 GHz on CPUs while not so long ago they used to be 2 GHz or less with regular air cooling.
  Today people are either doing chip stacking (e.g. on cellphones it is common to stack the DRAM and Flash on top of the CPU module) to make the system more compact. Then there are people working on so called vertical transistors and trigate transistors instead of using regular planar transistors. Ivy Bridge for example is the first processor featuring trigate transistors which is one reason for its low power consumption and reduced leakage over Sandy Bridge. It has been more trouble than usual but it seems everything is ok for the next two process shrinks to work in technological terms. Ultimately we will see the whole system on a chip and CPU/GPU integration is simply the first step with DRAM probably following soon afterwards.
Review Roundup by I.M.O.G. · 2012-04-23 05:15 · Score: 5, Informative

A roundup of reviews from the usual major sites as well as others not mentioned in the summary above: Overclockers Review, Anandtech Review, Anandtech Undervolting/Overclocking, HardwareSecrets, Bit-tech, PCPer, Tweaktown, Hard OCP, The Inquirer, Techspot, Computer Shopper, Tom's Hardware, ExtremeTech, PC Mag, Overclockers Club, and Guru 3d

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Overclockers
1. Re:Review Roundup by crookedvulture · 2012-04-23 05:28 · Score: 2
  
  The Tech Report has chimed in with its own review, which contains a unique look at gaming performance with the integrated graphics and discrete GPUs. There's also a dedicated overclocking article that looks at the experience on four different motherboards.
Re:HD 4000 by h4rr4r · 2012-04-23 05:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

The vast majority of users will use it. Intel integrated has been a good enough solution for most users for a long time now.
It would cost more to fab a chip without it, would you pay extra for that? Since they would be making so few.
This is a normal tick in the Intel tick-tock cycle. You will get that 50%-100% with Haswell.
Re:HD 4000 by ZankerH · 2012-04-23 05:33 · Score: 2

My current CPU is a Conroe architecture Core 2 duo E6700. I'm building an new PC with an Ivy Bridge i7 CPU in a couple months, and it'll definitely offer that kind of performance increase. Successive generations of latest and greatest have always offered marginal improvements at best, but it accumulates once you skip a generation or four.
Re:HD 4000 by Mabhatter · 2012-04-23 05:39 · Score: 2

Well, any machine at retail will. Retail is just to slim margins for the extra cost.
Graphics CAN'T be removed because they are built into the CPU-chipset combo... And nobody else is licensed to make chipsets. Intel is forcing OEMS to go back to "external" chips on the PCI-E bus... Which is 100% more circuitry and super complex firmware to get back to what you got from Nvidia. That adds $100-$200 to the wholesale.
Things like MacBook Air are forced to choose battery/size or performance... Which is why Apple stuck with C2D for so long as it was the last CPU intel allowed third party chipsets with.
What sucks most is that these NEW computers are stuck with OBSOLETE graphics out of the box... Note how Apple's Mountain Lion has to drop all the old Intel Integrated because it just can't perform to iPhone or iPad standards anymore... Ouch!
Re:HD 4000 by UnknowingFool · 2012-04-23 05:42 · Score: 3, Informative

Many consumers use onboard video. YouTube and casual gaming are okay on it. The lastest tests show that the 4000 is better or as good as the current generation of budget discrete cards. For the budget conscious consumer, there is no reason to get the budget nVidia or Radeon. Gamers don't care about either option anyways.

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Re:Intel's Tick-Tock cadence by TaoPhoenix · 2012-04-23 05:43 · Score: 2

Okay, so I have been planning a long term computer strategy since 2006 when I got a decent first gen Quad Core.
So hopefully if I can hold out that long, I should wait for the Tock - Haswell architecture, at the same time waiting for the Post-Win8-Metro consensus, which might just be either a Tock for Microsoft or maybe even a paradigm explosion into Apple and/or Linux if by some Mayan Miracle Microsoft implodes as a company. Or, if there is no "Windows 9", then I'll have to think about what to do then.

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Ivy Bridge feature summary by jbeaupre · 2012-04-23 07:04 · Score: 2

For those of us who need a reminder:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)
Yeah, it's Wikipedia. But it's short and to the point.

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Re:Other than the obvious by RightSaidFred99 · 2012-04-23 07:09 · Score: 2

Odd. You seem to be uninformed or lying. Ivy Bridge beats the A8 in games, go look at the benchmarks.
What now?
Re:Other than the obvious by voss · 2012-04-23 07:20 · Score: 2

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k/12
You mean these benchmarks???
"What Ivy Bridge does not appear to do is catch up to AMD's A8-series Llano APU. It narrows the gap, but for systems whose primary purpose is gaming AMD will still likely hold a significant advantage with Trinity. The fact that Ivy Bridge hasn't progressed enough to challenge AMD on the GPU side is good news. The last thing we need is for a single company to dominate on both fronts."
Re:HD 4000 by Bengie · 2012-04-23 08:22 · Score: 2

There is little to no demand for more CPU processing power. Even with Web/DB servers, most of the bottleneck is the IO or memory. Reducing power consumption is what everyone wants. They could easily slap on 8 cores and claim it's 2xs faster for the same power, but why. In the end it would just cost more, consume more power, and not add value.
Re:CPU for developers? by IntlHarvester · 2012-04-23 08:24 · Score: 2

Don't worry about the CPU and spend your money on a big SSD & lots of RAM.

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