Intel Haswell CPU review roundup

Intel’s Haswell is the latest range of processors the company has released for desktop consumers. The company promises a 5-15% improvement in CPU performance, 15% improvement in throughput, and a 10% improvement in graphics performance.

Several changes were made to the chip, the most important one being the new socket requirement. You need a motherboard with the LGA1150 socket, otherwise the chip won’t work. Although it may physically fit in, the way power is delivered to the processor changes drastically. A small bonus, though, is that most coolers made for LGA1156 and LGA1155 sockets will work just fine, including the stock Intel ones.

Power delivery is a major change in Haswell and it now integrates some new chips for voltage control. The VRM, or Voltage Regulation Module, was previously integrated into the motherboard and located near the processor socket. With Haswell the VRM is integrated into the processor itself, allowing Intel finer control over voltages and power consumption. Idle power consumption is some of the lowest the company has ever seen on a desktop quad-core processor.

The side effect of the tighter regulation is that Intel can now provide better performance targets. In the peak power tests done by Anandtech, they recorded a 11.8% performance improvement over Ivy Bridge, along with a 13% increase in power consumption. For a first-generation product, this is actually quite good.

It means that Intel, with the VRM now under their control, at least partially, can now provide performance increases at acceptable power levels. That degree of control will help the company make better-performing laptops parts and it’ll make Turbo Boost even better.

Intel Haswell Bioshock Infinite

Intel Haswell DiRT Showdown

Intel Haswell Skyrim Hardware Canucks

It won’t matter much for gaming, however. In modern games, Haswell is no better than Ivy or Sandy Bridge and there’s not even a very tangible increase from the Core i7-920, which will still sail through many modern games. Even though the integrated HD4600 graphics is a nice boost from the HD4000, it still lags behind AMD’s A10-5800K – an APU, mind you, that costs a third of the Core i7-4770K.

On a side note, notice how close the A10-5800K comes to Haswell in the benchmarks. In order to mask the chip’s failure to provide tangible performance increases many sites are benchmarking Haswell with games that are GPU-limited. Skyrim, in Hardware Canuck’s testing, shows that there is a performance increase, but not a huge one.

The target market for upgrades is anyone still on LGA775 or PGA478 products (yes, people still use the Pentium 4!). If you’re running a rig from the Nehalem or Lynnfield families (LGA1366 and LGA1156) you may still see some value here to decrease your system’s power consumption and internal temperatures, but it won’t be a big change. At the most, you’ll be benefiting more from the better chipset and ports for new devices than any improvements in outright speed.