This week brought us the release of Ivy Bridge. This particular release is especially strange and rather challenging to cover as a lot of the critical parts are spread out over a 3 month period. Earlier this month we saw the release of the Z77 chipset, which is the primary enthusiast chipset to support Ivy Bridge (like the Z68 Chipset). This week we get the release of the Quad Core CPU versions of Ivy Bridge.
The article below is a great extensive look at the Ivy Bridge release and more specifically, the Core i7-3770K. I just want to touch on a few key points here which will be important to you.
The number one question I am sure: ”Is it worth upgrading to Ivy Bridge from Sandy Bridge?” From a value standpoint my answer is no – UNLESS you want to run PCIe 3.0, or you want to support Thunderbolt technology.
Before I continue, there is a HUGE caveat about Thunderbolt. If you are wanting to use Thunderbolt devices with your new Ivy Bridge System – DO NOT BUY ANYTHING YET. The Z77 chipset will be supporting Thunderbolt with an additional controller, but this will not be released until the end of May. So that means you can’t buy a Z77 motherboard right now, and have it support Thunderbolt. If you don’t care about using Thunderbolt, then don’t worry about it.
The largest benefit for building an Ivy Bridge system is PCIe 3.0 – or it will be eventually. Currently you can play any game at max settings with PCIe 2.0 cards – though I am interested to see the effect PCIe 3.0 will have on current benchmarks. There are currently PCIe 3.0 capable cards on Tom’s Benchmarks, but it is difficult to compare the current offerings. AMD’s 7XXX series cards are PCIe 3.0 capable, and they perform better than the previous generation – but that is to be expected for a new generation video card. nVidia has released the GTX 680 as their only PCIe 3.0 video card, and it outperforms everything except certain cards with higher memory at higher settings – the Extreme benchmarks are dominated by 3 and 4 GB cards, which is to be expected considering the large resolution (keep this in mind when Retina Displays become mainstream).
My take on this is that if you have a Sandy Bridge system right now, don’t upgrade just yet (unless of course you simply enjoy doing that, then feel free to go nuts 
. There is no value justification in upgrading from a Sandy Bridge / Z68 system to an Ivy Bridge / Z77 system at this time.
Just to wrap up some other notes about this release. This release is only for the Quad Core Ivy Bridge CPUs. The i7-3770k reviewed below is the IB version of the i7-2600k/2700k. The i5-3570k is the IB version of the i5-2500k. So the mid-range build will likely consist of an i5-3570k on a Z77 chipset board. As I am writing this, I haven’t actually seen these chips available in retailers, so I am not sure when that will happen. It’s nice to note that the new versions of these CPUs are actually going to be slightly cheaper than their predecessors – the i7-3770k being $19 cheaper than previous, and the i5-3570k being $13 less. This says to me that retailers are going to likely drop prices on Sandy Bridge not insignificantly (or at least provide sales).
So again, if you currently have a Sandy Bridge system of at least the mid range build, there’s really no reason to upgrade to Ivy Bridge (other than for the heck of it).
I’ll be building a new Ivy Bridge system in the next couple of months – I’m waiting on Thunderbolt for Z77 as well as the rest of nVidia’s Kepler lineup.
For now, do check out this article for more extensive information on the Ivy Bridge release.
The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/
The times, they are changing. In fact, the times have already changed, we’re just waiting for the results. I remember the first time Intel brought me into a hotel room to show me their answer to AMD’s Athlon 64 FX—the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Back then the desktop race was hotly contested. Pushing the absolute limits of what could be done without a concern for power consumption was the name of the game. In the mid-2000s, the notebook started to take over. Just like the famous day when Apple announced that it was no longer a manufacturer of personal computers but a manufacturer of mobile devices, Intel came to a similar realization years prior when these slides were first shown at an IDF in 2005:
image from IntelFreePress
With the release of Intel’s Sandy Bridge E series CPUs, I can now take my Ultra Gaming build dreaming to the next level. Previously I have presented realistic gaming builds, in the
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The SSD you might find odd. First off, I’ve always loved the Revodrive concept – it’s basically an SSD slotted via x4 PCIe into the system. The result is you end up with twice the read/write as a normal SSD. The downside is price. I picked the 240GB for operating system and games/programs, with a set of RAID HDDs in the background for storage. I have on the list 2 1TB WD Black Hard Drives to be set in RAID – I would actually go with 5 1TB drives set up in RAID 5, giving the perfect combination of speed AND security. Hard Drives are expensive right now though, so starting with 2 is fine.
. Granted I would love to build a system around this setup, but it’s a bit out of my budget range currently.
Sandy Bridge E brings us two 6 core processors (and later a 4 core), each with hyper-threading for 12 threads. The i7-3960X is a 3.3 GHZ processor which comes with 15MB L3 Cache. The i7-3930K is a 3.2 GHZ processor bearing 12MB L3 Cache. In a few months Intel will also be releasing the i7-3820, a 4 core 8 thread processor at 3.9 GHZ with 10MB cache – this being part of the Sandy Bridge E series and sitting between the i7-2700k and the i7-3930K. The i7-3960X will run you around $1000, while the i7-3930K will be an ‘affordable’ $600.
To me, the increased performance in gaming over a 
