Intel Haswell CPU family: SA price comparison

This roundup will look at prices for various Intel Haswell processors to see which SA store is offering the cheapest deal. We’ll be looking at a few retailers familiar to MyGaming readers, and in the end we’ll pick a value winner; the chip (or chips) that everyone should be aiming for.

Intel’s Haswell processor family officially launched on 3 June 2013 to a lot of fanfare, but not a lot of praise. While the processor family doesn’t change much in terms of performance, the main changes were made to the integrated graphics, the memory controller, a newly integrated voltage modulator, and new power states, including a very low sleep state.

Intel has been pursuing better power efficiency rather than all-out speed, at the expense of any real speed improvements between processor generations.

The table below shows the prices of various Intel desktop processors available from local retailers. The lowest prices are highlighted in Bold. For the purposes of this roundup, products listed as “Sold Out”, “Contact for availability” or “Out of stock” will be included in the table. Prices are listed in South African Rands (R).

Newly announced processors in the Core i7, i5, i3 and Pentium range will be included where possible – please note that pricing on these products is tentative, and subject to change thanks to our fluctuating exchange rate.

Intel Haswell processor	Rebel Tech	Wootware	Ikonix	Titan-Ice	Prophecy
Pentium G3220 (3.0GHz, 2 threads)	714
Pentium G3420 (3.2GHz, 2 threads)	978
Pentium G3430 (3.3GHz, 2 threads)	1105
Core i3-4130 (3.4GHz, 4 threads)	1407
Core i3-4330 (3.5GHs, 4 threads)	1650
Core i3-4340 (3.6Ghz, 4 threads)	1894
Core i5-4430 (3.0GHz, 4 threads)	2234	2399	2303	2349	2318.65
Core i5-4440 (3.1GHz, 4 threads)	2343		2484	2449
Core i5-4570 (3.2GHz, 4 threads)	2405	2482	2488	2549	2495.46
Core i5-4670 (3.4GHz, 4 threads)	2677	2649	2749	2799	2773.85
Core i5-4670K (3.4GHz, 4 threads)	2894	2795	2981	3049	3003.33
Core i7-4770 (3.4Ghz, 8 threads)	3721	3750	3840	3899	3825.97
Core i7-4771 (3.5GHz, 8 threads)	4028		4142	4199
Core i7-4770K (3.5GHz, 8 threads)	4168	3999	4294	4349	4285.73

The current exchange rate with the United States Dollar puts our prices at a rather unfavourable level. The pricing between retailers is so tight that the differences in some cases amounts to a burger meal at Spur.

Rebeltech and Wootware are trading blows, while the other retailers seem to be trying to price-match and beat each other without losing much profit. However, any advantages a retailer gains in pricing may change when shipping costs are added to the final price.

And the winner is…

The value winner in this roundup is the Core i5-4570 at an average price of R2,483.89. It boasts four cores running at 3.2GHz boosting up to 3.6GHz for intensive applications, 6MB of L3 cache, integrated Intel HD4600 graphics, and a low 85W TDP (Thermal Design Power).

For those of you building a system for gaming that uses motherboards based on the H87 chipset or lower, this is the best processor to buy in that price range. It’ll do well in gaming and office scenarios and Intel’s HD4600 graphics is even powerful enough to run a lot of games on low settings at 720p.

Sharing the value award, the Core i5-4670K also makes a lot of sense for gamers on the Z87 platform. Most games aren’t scaling beyond four cores for the moment, and the extra base clock speed as well as the unlocked multiplier makes it far better value than the Core i7-4770K, which easily costs R1,000 more.