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Sandy vs Ivy vs Haswell
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1164
This is the most interesting article I've read in a long time. Ocaholic basically takes a core i7 K-edition from Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell, and sees how they perform while gaming.
They did 2 comparisons, with the chips all at stock clocks, and then OCing each of them to the same level (4.5Ghz).
The results were... I won't exactly say surprising, but interesting none the less.
Turns out, Ivy Bridge is the most efficient over all. It barely edged out Haswell, so close you could call it a rounding error at stock speeds, both come in around 12% more efficient than Sandy. When you overclock though, Ivy still wins, but Haswell is the worst - even Sandy beats it out and by a large margin. Sandy using 5% more power than Ivy, and Haswell using 15% more power than Ivy.
And when OCed to 4.5 running games at max settings, the performance winner is - a virtual tie. They are all within about 1% of each other. Which is not surprising, your seeing the video card bottleneck.
If you eliminate the video card bottle neck... there is a 3-4% difference in benchmarks between each of the successive generations. Haswell came in at 6% faster than Sandy at stock clocks, and 8% faster when overclocked, and Ivy sat right in the middle of that.
So what's that mean? Pretty much that all of these CPUs are hitting the GPU bottleneck. And there's not really any point in upgrading from one of these CPUs to another. Haswell, in terms of gaming, could actually be considered a step down from Ivy Bridge, given the overclocking power consumption (which is seen in effect on a maximum overclock), although it does edge out Ivy on Speed per clock cycle.
And interesting read, it's something we've seen thrown around here a lot, as a lot of Sandy Bridge folks (and even some Ivy Bridge users) are looking to upgrade sometime soon. I was almost surprised we didn't see a big gap between the three generations, 3-4% increase per generation isn't much.. but this isn't just IPC we are measuring, this is total system performance, and aside from the CPU not much else has changed, we're still on DDR3, we're still on PCI3.0, and we're still on software that struggles to really branch across multiple cores and stress the CPU. So I guess when you take all that into account, a theoretical 12-15% IPC gain translating to a 3-4% real world gain probably isn't all that far fetched.
Comments
I bought in april 2012 a ivybridge i came from the x58mb so was rather good upgrade(best was offcorse USB3 and SSD upgrade).
And now more then year later and the knowledge of haswell not realy better then ivy plus fact that all new GPU cards still can be used on my ivebridge mb for me its one of best series ive ever bought.
Ive also OC my 3770k to 4.6ghz and with my 290x card i can go on for prolly another 2 years.
On avarage i do 2 years with a system i dont see why i should buy new system in a years time.
And with xfire improved so much maybe i even surpass the 3 year mark:)
I think the interesting reviews from ocaholic is the comparisons of FX cpus vs Intels lineup. It's pretty clear how you as a reviewer, can make FX look shyte, or make it look just as good.
I'm talking resolution here of course. What we are shown, is that FX to a full HD setup is not a bad idea at all. And that the low resolution shows us, that Intel is the future proof choice. But seeing as how Intel Quad cores 4 and even 5 generations old are still keeping up with the flock, FX cpus are probably going to be valid and able for all their lifetime. And everybody will have changed their cpu, long before future proof becomes a point that actually matters.
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1117&page=8
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1117&page=11
Basically, as long as you are playing the sort of games that tax your GPU, and set the level of detail as high as your GPU will be able to deliver, then the CPUs will perform almost identically. And if you don't, if you play some games that hardly pressure your GPU, well then the system won't have any problems playing those games either.
I just upgraded from a six year old Core 2 Duo to a Haswell 4670K, so I feel no guilt about doing that whatsoever. But yes, everyone seems to say that if you already have an Ivy or a Sandy, it's not even close to being worth upgrading. And in my opinion that serves Intel right for catering so slavishly to the laptop and mobile markets with these new CPUs. And leaving the desktop enthusiasts out to dangle.
However..., I do more than just gaming. I do a small bit of video encoding, and I also participate in volunteer computing (SETI and Folding at Home). And it's been great fun kicking some Ivy and Sandy ass - even without having Hyper-threading. From what I've read the raw processing power difference between each of these generations is more like 8%. And that can show in something like SETI. But still, I won the cpu lottery with my particular Haswell chip. And I was really able to crank up my overclock using low voltages. But if an Ivy or a Sandy was clocked higher (which some of them can do), I admit that could potentially make up a lot of the gap.
One more thought. I could really give two shytes about power consumption. That's all laptop user nonsense. And the difference between a few watts or whatever is essentially meaningless otherwise. I just turned off all my Speedstep and Turbo Boost silliness, and let whatever the load is determine the power draw. Which works quite well, thank you very much.
Edit: And I am looking forward to having a whole new experience playing DCS A-10C Warthog. A cpu intensive game that can use multithreading. There are a few games out there which can benefit from having a decent cpu!