Ivy Bridge-E is Intel’s successor to their high-end computing platform, Sandy Bridge on the LGA2011 socket. It will be released in September 2013 and will be priced lower than the outgoing Sandy Bridge models.
It may also present a challenge to current-generation Haswell parts, as these chips will be cooler and cheaper at launch than Haswell processors.
Ivy Bridge-E introduces the same benefits that users saw in the regular desktop version of Ivy Bridge, including lower power usage and better boost states.
The minor performance boosts won’t completely make up for the fact that the chips won’t overclock as high, and may actually be hotter once overclocked as a result of the jump down to the 22nm manufacturing process.
| i7-3970X | i7-4960X | i7-3960X | i7-4930K | i7-3930K | i7-4820K | i7-3820 | |
| Clock speed | 3.7GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.5GHz | 3.4GHz | 3.2GHz | 3.7GHz | 3.6GHz |
| Turbo speed | 4.0GHz | 3.7GHz | 3.9GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.8GHz | 3.9GHz | 3.8GHz |
| Core count | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 |
| Thread count | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 8 | 8 |
| L3 cache | 15MB | 15MB | 15MB | 12MB | 12MB | 10MB | 10MB |
| TDP | 150W | 130W | 130W | 130W | 130W | 130W | 130W |
| RRP (USD) | $1059 | 990 | 1059 | 555 | 594 | 310 | 305 |
The most interesting part of the lineup is the unlocked Core i7-4820K. It’s only slightly more expensive than the Core i7-3820 but should be a real bargain thanks to the overclocking capabilities, lower power consumption, and slightly higher performance.
It brings the entire lineup more into parity because Intel has probably now realised that enthusiasts don’t buy the Core i7-3820 because it’s a locked processor on a platform that is meant to deliver ultimate performance.
The Core i7-4960X may be the biggest disappointment initially because of its lower stock speeds. The Turbo Boost speed should now apply to all cores and give it the edge in multi-threaded benchmarks, but its the price that’s going to be the main concern here.
The Core i7-4771 is also not what we expected
VR-Zone managed to get its hands on a Core i7-4771 and it looks like this chip isn’t anything really special. Its a locked version of the Core i7-4770K, and performs identically at the same stock and Turbo Boost speeds. It may be the replacement for the Core i7-4770, which is slower than the K-series version at stock speeds and may not be as popular owing to that performance deficit.
It may be that Intel has also noticed a lot of users buying the Core i7-4770K and inserting it into motherboards with the H87 or H81 chipset and using the Non-Z OC feature to expose multiplier-based overclocking on those platforms. Intel plans to ship out microcode updates with new BIOS versions or through Windows Update and will release the Core i7-4771 later this year.
Source: VR-Zone
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I must admit I think I hit it lucky with Intel CPUs… I had a Q6600 which just didn’t want to stop owning (still sitting in a box somewhere in my flat) and my Sandy Bridge 2600 just runs like a king… Still very happy!
Intel is just the best choice for CPUs in my opinion. They last!