Intel haswell i7-4770K preview article-TMSHW

[FlanK3r]

i7-4770K was benchamrked in few test at Tomshardware. What I seen, is it about 5-10% better than i7-3770K, no more (without CL HD4xxx optimalization). SO, what do you think?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ance,3461.html

[Ivanlabrie]

Nice, looks like a decent improvement all around, specially graphics wise. I'm excited and can't wait for oc results and more info.

[FlanK3r]

I mean, for users dont have logic change SB or IB for this...(only for enthusiast). But yes, HD graphic has very nice improvements in performance.

[kromosto]

nice scores nice improvement. as you said it doesn't make me upgrade over 3770k but but if i build a system today sure i will wait for this.

[informal]

For someone building a new PC,if price is right, 4770K is the best you can buy. But for someone who already own SB or IB I doubt this would be a good upgrade. You have to sell your board and CPU ,buy a new combo, and for what? 3-8% IPC improvement with similar OC margin? Seems like a waste of money to me(unless someone doesn't care much for money and wants absolute best). Until AVX2/FMA3 workloads become normal IB at the same clock would be pretty much indistinguishable in legacy workloads from Haswell.

[flopper]

For someone building a new PC,if price is right, 4770K is the best you can buy. But for someone who already own SB or IB I doubt this would be a good upgrade. You have to sell your board and CPU ,buy a new combo, and for what? 3-8% IPC improvement with similar OC margin? Seems like a waste of money to me(unless someone doesn't care much for money and wants absolute best). Until AVX2/FMA3 workloads become normal IB at the same clock would be pretty much indistinguishable in legacy workloads from Haswell.

the return performance is less with every generation it seems.
time to upgrade from my 2 year and counting 2500k though.

[Greg83]

the see3 performance improvement being so small makes me think the only gains in IPC from this processor are coming from code path optimization additions to ss4+.
makes me wonder if all IPC improvements are imaginary now adays and directly related to the new code paths , SSE4 avx.

[Iconyu]

the see3 performance improvement being so small makes me think the only gains in IPC from this processor are coming from code path optimization additions to ss4+.
makes me wonder if all IPC improvements are imaginary now adays and directly related to the new code paths , SSE4 avx.

New software will just add an extra code path, old software just gets a minor boost. But it's not imagery if you utilize it. If I remember correctly Sandybridge shuts off part of its SSE engine for SSE3, it's been 2 years since AVX was introduced both companies support it and both console makers have built their next gen machines with it. In new software, SSE3 will be like x87 support within two generations of CPU if x86 and PC's in general survive the 'ARM's race'.

[Greg83]

yes. but what SSE3 perf is showing me.
is the only performance improvement gonna come from this. is in software coded for the new AVX SSE4 additions which finally made use of what was likely available in the processors already. either too hard to code for, with the lazy programmers.
making it appear like this generation is improving on die performance. while its really more optimizing the available then actual rawr performance gains from more compute units.

would these improvements shown , go beyond the software used, or be equal for improvements for all the alternatives.

cause if it only improves the performance with 1% of the software you use. but if you switched all your software, then you could get upto 10%?

[kl0012]

What I found interesting in THG preview is Sisoft Sandra FMA results. Haswell does perform better than IB/SB but not nearly good enough when you look at the "theoretical" boost FMA could bring- they gained only around 18% of FP performance Vs 256bit AVX codepath.

Probably Sandra2013 doesn't support FMA3 yet (only FMA4), so the IPC improvements are responsible for current perf. gain.

Impressive improvement in graphics perf. (considering that this is just GT2). Waiting for my next laptop with GT3 (or, hopefully, convertible with passive cooling).

[informal]

Probably Sandra2013 doesn't support FMA3 yet (only FMA4), so the IPC improvements are responsible for current perf. gain.

Impressive improvement in graphics perf. (considering that this is just GT2). Waiting for my next laptop with GT3 (or, hopefully, convertible with passive cooling).

I was under impression that sisoft sandra was the 1st piece of desktop commercial software to support both FMA3(FMA4 on BD/PD) and AVX2.

edit:
From THG article:

Why do doubles seem to speed up so much more than floats on Haswell? The code path for FMA3 is actually latency-bound. If we were to turn off FMA3 support altogether in Sandra?s options and used AVX, the scaling proves similar.

So if they have option to turn off FMA3 code path then it's logical it actually has support for this codepath.

edit2:
Found this on sisoft facebook page , it definitely supports FMA3.

We are pleased to announce the release of SP1 for SANDRA 2013! Because we managed to test Haswell (Crystal Well), we have some fixes and optimisations:

- AVX2 integer support (Multi-Media integer, Hashing)

- FMA3 float support (Multi-Media float/double, Memory/Cache bandwidth) [also works on Vishera]

- TSX (HLE/RTM) support (Transaction rate)

- eDRAM/L4 support (Memory, Cache, Latency)

SP6 for Sandra 2012 with all the fixes and enhancements of Sandra 2013 (but not new features) has also been published.

[kl0012]

I was under impression that sisoft sandra was the 1st piece of desktop commercial software to support both FMA3(FMA4 on BD/PD) and AVX2.

In the link I posted they explicitly mentioned FMA4, but no FMA3.

[qcmadness]

Not much IPC improvement...

[behrouz]

ok , due to Bad Thermal Grease in Ivy Bridge , Is Haswell hot as IV ? did Intel fix it ? Hope Intel gives us good new

[owikh84]

ok , due to Bad Thermal Grease in Ivy Bridge , Is Haswell hot as IV ? did Intel fix it ? Hope Intel gives us good new

the culprit behind the overheating issues of Ivy is not the thermal grease but the black adhesive

Compare all the "a" cases to the "b" cases, the only functional differences in these two test conditions is the CPU TIM. Notice that the Intel stock CPU TIM outperforms the NT-H1 replacement TIM once the CPU-to-IHS gap is identical

(all the "b" cases are ~2-3?C warmer than the "a" cases)

And if we remove the paper shim and drop that IHS down onto the CPU (not perfectly zero of course, there is still some NT-H1 CPU TIM there after all) reducing the gap to as close to zero as possible then we get the "c" cases...and the temperatures show the expected fantastic drops we have all come to expect from delidding our Ivy Bridge chips.

Conclusion: The Intel stock CPU TIM is not the reason Ivy Bridge's run hot, and replacing the Intel stock CPU TIM is not the reason a delidded Ivy Bridge runs so much cooler - the benefits of delidding are entirely due to the resultant reduction in gap height between the CPU silicon die and the underside of the IHS.

the black adhesive glue is too thick making the gap between the die and IHS wider than it should be.

Source

[R101]

GPU with eDRAM on laptop will be a beast. Everything else is as expected..

[nossy23]

Seems like I will grow old with my 2600K. Does Intel really not want people with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge desktop chip to upgrade? Give us at least a 6 core as a minimum already!!! And I don't need silicon spend on an igpu.

[geo]

Seems like I will grow old with my 2600K. Does Intel really not want people with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge desktop chip to upgrade? Give us at least a 6 core as a minimum already!!! And I don't need silicon spend on an igpu.

this. Its been over 6 years since Q6600 was introduced. Its 2013 and still no mainstream 6 cores.. AMD's HSA seems more interesting than this :/

even haswell mobo's seem more of the same old no NGFF slot,No SATA Express, no integrated widi / miracast.. 99% of boards dont come with bluetooh 4.0 or wifi, no decent onboard sound.

and people wonder why PC growth is stagnant. :/

[BababooeyHTJ]

Seems like I will grow old with my 2600K. Does Intel really not want people with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge desktop chip to upgrade? Give us at least a 6 core as a minimum already!!! And I don't need silicon spend on an igpu.

Exactly, I've been using a quad core cpu for the longest time now. Its too bad that they still don't have any plans for a hex core cpu on their mainstream platform.

[Glow9]

Exactly, I've been using a quad core cpu for the longest time now. Its too bad that they still don't have any plans for a hex core cpu on their mainstream platform.

Our graphics go nowhere because consoles only evolve to the next platform every X amount of years.
Our processors are not going to get much more powerful now that the mobile market is the key battleground, efficiency is the name of the game and Intel is at war with ARM.
Sorry but you don't need 6 cores to play Angry birds, games are still coming out in DX9.... I'm pretty happy we even get updates as often as we do, except they should unlock everything to keep pc enthusiasm going.

[informal]

What I found interesting in THG preview is Sisoft Sandra FMA results. Haswell does perform better than IB/SB but not nearly good enough when you look at the "theoretical" boost FMA could bring- they gained only around 18% of FP performance Vs 256bit AVX codepath. They mention that the FMA results are latency bound so this could be potential bottleneck . This could mean that Haswell-E/EP won't be making huge performance jumps(~2x) in spec fp tests when compared to IB Xeon derivatives. Maybe this is why AMD has not opted to expand their FlexFP unit to native 2x256bit FMA pipes, they expected that intel won't be getting such a massive lead with Haswell's implementation of FMA.

[chispy]

Thanks for the heads up on this article Flank3r , now waiting to see performance and overclockability under cold , that will decide if I jump in the bandwagon of Haswell or I keep my good 3770K cpu and Z77 platform.

[himaro]

it seems like my decision to wait out IB and go for Haswell was a good idea
My Q6600, while amazing, is showing its age now.

I think people asking for large leaps in performance are beginning to expect to much. if you think about how much money Intel is putting into the development, it shows that silicon is simply reaching the point where it cannot progress much further.
they've pushed it as far as they can and now it's more down to instruction set optimizations and software optimization to become more efficient (i'm looking at you, Microsoft)

[informal]

it seems like my decision to wait out IB and go for Haswell was a good idea
My Q6600, while amazing, is showing its age now.

I think people asking for large leaps in performance are beginning to expect to much. if you think about how much money Intel is putting into the development, it shows that silicon is simply reaching the point where it cannot progress much further.
they've pushed it as far as they can and now it's more down to instruction set optimizations and software optimization to become more efficient (i'm looking at you, Microsoft)

Going from Q6600(OCed) to IB or Haswell is almost like going from Prescott to Conroe . Massive leap in overall performance ,massive leap in min. fps in games, massive leap in encoding/rendering. It's money well spent.

[Snow Crash]

with the lazy programmers.

Are you a programmer ... probably not because if you were you would understand that the people who are upset the most about not being able to take advantage of an opportunity to optimize are the very programmers you are disparaging. Like Iconyu posted, it takes time ... and we don't get much say in development cycle timing for a project, typically we are given milestone dates and have to meet them. Recoding something that already works is usually last on the list of things to do unless there is a human perceptable different ... so if it takes 1 second, I'm not spending time the boss is not paying me for to get it to happen in 1 ms given that it will only be evident in a synthetic benchmark that has no bearing on the real world.