Unlike some dubious drivers over the years that were optimized for benchmarks over real world application, Intel’s AES-NI feature does encompass the addition of specialized hardware. With Intel’s focus on its AES-NI features TrueCrypt can look a bit skewed. Here, Ivy Bridge does put out some gains, mostly attributed to clock speed increases and a bit of architectural increase. Cinebench R11.5 is something that anyone can run on their Windows machines to get a relative idea of performance and both Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-EP systems run it well.ħ-Zip is an immensely popular compression application with an easy to use benchmark.

I have had quite a few readers contact me about this type of performance for things like servers that are Adobe CS6 compute nodes and similar applications. With the expansion of the site’s scope, Cinebench has been added to the test suite because it does represent a valuable benchmark of multi-threaded performance. I have been using Cinebench benchmarks for years but have held off using them on because the primary focus of the site until the past few months has been predominantly storage servers. One will see there is some improvement but nothing huge. Just for comparison, here is the Core i7-2600K launch piece’s WEI: Core i7-2600K WEI Score Intel Core i7-3770K Windows Experience Index Here is a quick preview of the performance difference using the Windows Experience Index (WEI) feature in Windows 7. With that in mind, Intel really did work on a feature upgrade rather than a pure CPU performance upgrade with this generation. Also, with Ivy Bridge, Intel focused on GPU performance, PCIe 3.0, Thunderbolt, and adding USB 3.0 support along with lowering power consumption and price. As a K series Intel Core i7 processor, one does have the option to overclock. Moving to the 16-64 core realm where the Xeon E5 series will play, that is becoming the norm today, I think that it will become ever more important to develop a second test suite.Īt 3.5GHz base clock, and with four cores, eight threads (4C/8T) the expectation is that this will be a fast CPU. Clearly, one would expect a different workload between the Xeon E5-2687W CPU and something found in a low-end, low-power server like a Pentium G630. With platforms like this one, I have been slowly altering the mix. I will start off this section by saying that the standard test suite was built to test 1-8 thread single CPU systems such as the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Intel Xeon CPUs. Power Supply: Corsair AX850 850w 80 Plus Gold + PicoPSU 150XT with 150w power supply.Drives: Corsair Force3 120GB, OCZ Vertex 3 120GB.Memory: 32GB (8x 4GB) G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600.With that being said, most Z77 buyers will still use discrete GPUs. If you are looking for a workstation with a lot of CPU need but where 3D GPU performance was not needed, then Intel’s on-die graphics are going to be “good-enough” for many users one one can use the third-gen PCIe slots for more I/O performance. The trend with Z68 and Z77 chipsets are that the integrated GPUs are more than adequate for basic 2D output. It really shows how AMD has dropped the ball in terms of competition. Interestingly enough even four generations removed an Ivy Bridge core is certainly not twice the performance clock-for-clock, as compared to the 45nm Nahelem architectures which are really the ancestor of Intel’s current cores. The CPU cores are frankly the least exciting part of the equation since they offer relatively minor performance improvement. The PCIe connectivity is something that readers of this site will be excited about as Intel essentially has doubled the bandwidth for PCIe devices. The GPUs in Ivy Bridge chips are still underpowered for hardcore gaming enthusiasts but are now more than adequate for non-gaming workloads. Next, Intel made a few major upgrades both to the GPU and the PCIe conenctivity. First, Intel has introduced its 22nm architecture which promises better power consumption figures and smaller die sizes. Ivy Bridge’s improvements can basically be put into two big buckets. I think platform makes more sense at this point since the CPU now contains not just the compute cores, but also the GPU, PCIe controller and memory controllers. Ivy Bridge is Intel’s 2012 successor to 2011’s Sandy Bridge platform.

Ivy bridge core i7