My new CPU has arrived, i5 3570k. Time to test it out.

[Ket]

Title says it all, I got hold of a new i5 3570k for ?150 (tray, no useless packaging and stock HSF, w00t!) to replace my dying / dead i5 2500k. First impressions are excellent.

i5 3570k stats: As reported in UEFI

Idle Voltage: 0.97v
Idle temp: 29.5c (panel off) 32c (panel on)

i5 2500k stats: When it was new, reported by UEFI

Idle voltage: 1.15v - 1.184v
Idle temp: 42c (panel on)

Already its easy to see this IB chip is a far better piece of silicon than what my old i5 2500k was, and indeed even at stock speeds the i5 3570k even feels much snappier when installing Win7 Ultimate x64. So far the only thing I've tested with this 3570k is how low I can get the CPU PLL voltage, and the results there have been excellent too. The old 2500k couldn't handle lower CPU PLL voltage than 1.832v, no doubt because of how crap the silicon was it was made on, the 3570k however is a much happier story coming in at 1.58v although I've set it to a nice even 1.6v. Once I have installed Win7 and got everything set up again I shall test for stability and temps then get to clocking The chip is a Costa Rica one, as the CPU is from a tray and not retail the only image I can give you guys is a pic of the IHS:

[AMDforME]

The primary gain with IB over SB is reduced power consumption. Performance is only marginally better clock-for-clock.

[Ket]

I know thats the case on paper, but I can certainly "see" the difference during the Windows install process and boot times with the 3570k vs the 2500k. By no means is IB significantly better than SB in performance terms, but the 3570k is definitely more responsive than my old 2500k.

[Ket]

Ok, I got to doing some more tests today. One thing which was interesting to note is that with memory @ 1600MHz 7-8-8-24 1N the CPU is actually a little bottlenecked in some situations, increasing memory speed to 1866MHz removes this slight bottleneck, meaning, if you have a 3570k or 3770k and are "only" running 1600MHz memory with tight timings, you have a legitimate excuse to run 1866MHz memory now

IBT Settings:

Stress Level: Custom
Memory Used: 6750MB+

Stock 3.4GHz, 1600MHz 7-8-8-24 1N 1.5v, CPU PLL 1.6v


Stock 3.4GHz, 1866MHz 9-9-9-24 1N 1.5v, CPU PLL 1.6v


Stock 3.4GHz, 2133MHz 10-10-10-24 1N 1.5v, CPU PLL 1.6v


Those are all the results so far, I'll see how high the memory kit I have can climb without timings getting crap then start working on increasing CPU frequency.

[Ket]

Alright, screens later for now just numbers. Seems like my new CPU is decent, I tested memory up to 2200MHz but couldn't go further, this is no doubt the memory limiting me here as the kit is only a set of G.Skill Ripjaws "blue line" 7-8-7-24 PC12800, as for CPU speed itself I can get up to 4.6GHz with just 1.19v. 4.7GHz+ will require in excess of 1.23v - 1.25v so with that in mind "sensible" max speed is going to sit around 4.8GHz I'd think. Before pushing that far though I'll need to get me a NZXT Kraken X40.