Intel Core i7-3770 Preview: On-Board GPU Outperforms AMD & Nvidia Low-End Cards

Even though Intel’s 22nm Ivy Bridge processors aren’t expected to be officially released until the end of April 2012, a preview of the Core i7-3770K CPU was recently posted online detailing, among others, the graphics performance of the chip when compared with AMD and Nvidia entry-level GPUs.

The Core i7-3770K preview was published earlier today by AnandTech, one of the most well-known and trusted hardware review websites out there.

From what we can tell, the CPU used for these tests is a “production quality Ivy Bridge” processor, but both the motherboard and graphics drivers used are still in a pre-production form.

What this means is that Intel could still improve the graphics performance of Ivy Bridge through a series of driver updates.

Despite the still early nature of these drivers however, the Intel HD 4000 GPU integrated in the Core i7-3770K processor proves itself to be quite capable of running some current games at 1680x1050 resolutions.

Furthermore, the HD 4000 even manages to significantly surpass entry-level graphics cards like AMD’s Radeon HD 5450 or Nvidia’s GeForce GT 520M, which in Metro 2033 is just 10% slower than the GeForce GT 440.

The Core i7-3770K is Intel’s highest performing desktop processor based on the Ivy Bridge architecture and it packs four processing cores with Hyper-Threading support clocked at 3.5GHz (up to 3.9GHz in Turbo Boost mode).

Much like the current Sandy Bridge-based Core i7 parts, the chip also sports 8MB of shared L3 cache, but its integrated GPU has been updated to the new HD 4000, which packs 30% more EUs than its predecessor.

So far, Intel hasn’t confirmed the official launch date of the Ivy Bridge processors, but the latest reports to arrive seem to indicate the chips will see the light of day at the end of April 2012.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview