Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up From Sandy Bridge

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]tourist[/nom]From what i have been reading and verified by a 40 friend who is a master plumber, in 1996 the epa started restricting the lead content in fluxless solder down too less than 0.02% and has been implementing a total phase out from 2006. Maybe this is the reason ? don't know for sure but the cost has gone up.[/citation]

That's not very impacting. There are many other materials to make different solders. For example, Indium can be great for highly thermally conductive solders.

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]So they used solder instead of paste with SB? Also, so what would you replace the paste with?Great insight/theory BTW blaz.[/citation]

Highly thermally conductive paste would be the easiest. That paste is in use isn't the major problem, it's the horrible quality paste that Intel chose. Even some very cheap pastes are far more thermally conductive than the crap that Intel uses. This is another factor as to why I don't think that Intel's limiting IB in such a way was motivated by reducing the cost of manufacturing for IB CPUs.

Something such as this might be better than even AS5 despite being very cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200059
Not only is it very thermally conductive, but it also hardens, so it can hold the IHS on even after you cut the glue off to remove it.

 

[army_ant7]

Interesting. I want to share something with you guys, but you might know it already. You knew that there was copper in the IHS right? Well, maybe at least recent processors. You could actually lap it with sandpaper so as to polish off the micro-crevices on it's surface. This mod supposedly allows more contact between your "external" heatsink and the IHS. I wonder how much added cost to manufacturing it would it be for Intel and AMD to apply this in their production process of their CPU's. It's a pretty intensive task for modders to do it, but for machines... I wonder.

Here's another thought. I remember older CPU's as having no IHS, it just has the exposed black chip. I wonder if the IHS actually serves any other purpose, aside from added mass/metal to absorb heat and protection from physical and maybe electrical (static discharge) damage. This compared to having the bare chip make contact with an "external" heatsink with copper contacts.
Addendum: I wonder if it actually serves as an impediment to heat dissipation because of its added thermal paste layer in addition to the TP layer between it and the "external" HS, in the case of IB and possibly other processors. BTW, is the solder on the SB's less conductive than the IHS/"external" HS?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]Interesting. I want to share something with you guys, but you might know it already. You knew that there was copper in the IHS right? Well, maybe at least recent processors. You could actually lap it with sandpaper so as to polish off the micro-crevices on it's surface. This mod supposedly allows more contact between your "external" heatsink and the IHS. I wonder how much added cost to manufacturing it would it be for Intel and AMD to apply this in their production process of their CPU's. It's a pretty intensive task for modders to do it, but for machines... I wonder.Here's another thought. I remember older CPU's as having no IHS, it just has the exposed black chip. I wonder if the IHS actually serves any other purpose, aside from added mass/metal to absorb heat and protection from physical and maybe electrical (static discharge) damage. This compared to having the bare chip make contact with an "external" heatsink with copper contacts.Addendum: I wonder if it actually serves as an impediment to heat dissipation because of its added thermal paste layer in addition to the TP layer between it and the "external" HS, in the case of IB and possibly other processors. BTW, is the solder on the SB's less conductive than the IHS/"external" HS?[/citation]

Yes, I know of lapping and it's something that I do quite often. Problem is that it probably wouldn't help Ivy a whole lot because Ivy's problem seems to be getting heat to the IHS from the CPU die, not from the IHS to the cooler.

I think that the IHS is intended to reduce the chances of damaging the CPU die. The paste between the IHS and the CPU cooler should be a very thin layer and I don't think that it makes a huge difference, but higher quality paste always helps there too. The IHS is made of copper and is coated in nickel, if I remember correctly. I'm not sure if the solder is less conductive than the IHS, but unless it's made of copper, than it's probably at least a little less conductive than the IHS.

 

[Beverage]

Nice review! Made me decide to add a small graphics card to my Ivy Bridge HTPC. But exactly which HD6570 did you use? There are versions with DDR3 and GDDR5 and from 1GB and up (but I don't think amount of RAM has an effect on gaming, and GDDR5 versions are hard to find) and among the DDR3 versions they have different "efficient clock rates" from 1333 to 1800MHz.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]beverage[/nom]Nice review! Made me decide to add a small graphics card to my Ivy Bridge HTPC. But exactly which HD6570 did you use? There are versions with DDR3 and GDDR5 and from 1GB and up (but I don't think amount of RAM has an effect on gaming, and GDDR5 versions are hard to find) and among the DDR3 versions they have different "efficient clock rates" from 1333 to 1800MHz.[/citation]

For an HTPC, none of that seems likely to make much of a difference. For gaming, the GDDR5 versus DDR3 argument is significant and even DDR3-1333 to DDR3-1800 could be a significant performance difference. Also, you probably meant effective clock rates, not efficient. You're partially right about RAM capacity in that more than 1GB doesn't matter for the 6570, but it can matter for other, much higher end cards such as the 7850 and up in some games with some settings.

 

[Beverage]

If I want to play as many games as possible on my HTPC it does matter. As you can see in the tests HD6570 is about twice as fast as HD4000, but which HD6570? And I don't have power & space for any bigger card anyway. But the only ones who know which card they actually used are the ones who made this test. Do they read these comments?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]beverage[/nom]If I want to play as many games as possible on my HTPC it does matter. As you can see in the tests HD6570 is about twice as fast as HD4000, but which HD6570? And I don't have power & space for any bigger card anyway. But the only ones who know which card they actually used are the ones who made this test. Do they read these comments?[/citation]

If I had to guess, I'd say this is the 6570 DDR3 in these tests, but it's been a while since I've read the article and I don't feel like re-reading it to make sure. You could do a Google/Bing/Yahoo/whatever search for direct comparisons between DDR3 and GDDR5 6570s and HD 4000. Keep in mind that even if this article did have the DDR3 or GDDR5 confusion clarified, the HD 4000 of different CPUs, especially those of different families (i3, i5, and i7), can have significantly different performance. Despite having the same model name, Intel varied the frequency of different CPU's IGPs. All HD 4000 IGPs are physically identical, but varying clock frequencies still varies performance significantly. For example, i3s' HD 4000 will be weaker than i5s' and i7s' HD 4000 and the same is probably true for HD 2500 on various CPUs, but I'd have to look that up to be sure.

Also, the Radeon 7750 is much faster than the fastest 6570 and consumes slightly less power (well, the 800MHz reference-based 7750 models at least, maybe not so for the 900MHz-based 7750 models). It might still be larger, but it's a possibility. The GTX 650 Ti is even faster and is also very small, but IDK how it compares to the 6570 in size. Well, they're something to look into unless you don't mind getting a much weaker 6570.

Also, some Tom's guys do read the comments, but how quickly they reply can vary greatly, especially with articles that aren't less than one or two days old.

 

[ramon zarat]

LOL! 3 years after this article and 4 years after buying my 2500K @ 4.7Ghz, I STILL have no incentive whatsoever to upgrade! Especially now that you must also not only change your motherboard, but also upgrade to DDR4 RAM!

 

[RedJaron]

"LOL" at your pointless necro-post! You do realize that with the efficiency and IPC improvements of SB -> IB -> HW that a 4690K @ 4.4 GHz will beat a 2500K @ 4.7 GHz, right? And let's not forget things like AVX 2.0, native USB3, M.2, SATA Express, and other additional features that SB didn't have. And you get all of that on considerably less power. Also, LGA 1150 does not require switching to DDR4.

Those differences may not be terribly compelling to some people, maybe even most, but saying there is "no incentive whatsoever" is completely false.

 

[jfizzle4321]

"LOL" at your pointless necro-post! You do realize that with the efficiency and IPC improvements of SB -> IB -> HW that a 4690K @ 4.4 GHz will beat a 2500K @ 4.7 GHz, right? And let's not forget things like AVX 2.0, native USB3, M.2, SATA Express, and other additional features that SB didn't have. And you get all of that on considerably less power. Also, LGA 1150 does not require switching to DDR4.

Those differences may not be terribly compelling to some people, maybe even most, but saying there is "no incentive whatsoever" is completely false.

Wouldn't it depend on what the rig is used for? E.g. if the rig is used purely for gaming and windows 10 is now going to maximize the use of multi-core, especially in gaming, it could be postulated that the cpu will be future-proofed even further. Am I correct? I don't really use my PC for anything processor intensive aside from flight sims and racing sims. It's mainly a work/research station that I use for gaming.

 

[RedJaron]

His "point" was a complete strawman. Most CPU upgrades require a motherboard swap, including when he built his Sandy Bridge machine, but he acts like it's some huge, unique burden to Haswell. It's doubly false in his sense because he's responding to an Ivy Bridge article, and an IB CPU would drop directly into a 6-series SB mboard with a BIOS update. Biggest of all, he's acting as though IB was supposed to be some monstrous upgrade over SB and failed at it, even though neither Intel nor reviewers marketed it as such.

If you're happy with your current system and it's not holding you back, then there's probably little reason to you to upgrade it.

 

[jfizzle4321]

His "point" was a complete strawman. Most CPU upgrades require a motherboard swap, including when he built his Sandy Bridge machine, but he acts like it's some huge, unique burden to Haswell. It's doubly false in his sense because he's responding to an Ivy Bridge article, and an IB CPU would drop directly into a 6-series SB mboard with a BIOS update. Biggest of all, he's acting as though IB was supposed to be some monstrous upgrade over SB and failed at it, even though neither Intel nor reviewers marketed it as such.

If you're happy with your current system and it's not holding you back, then there's probably little reason to you to upgrade it.

I understand your point. I do remember people telling me to avoid SB-E back when I commented on this thread some 3 years ago saying to wait for IB because it was going to smoke SB-E, though it wasn't actually in this thread (I actually can't believe this thread is still alive). In retrospect, I was single and in undergrad when I commented on this thread and now I'm married and about to finish my master's in a month so that was a long time ago. My question to you is whether it's worth an upgrade if you already have a solid mobo (rampage extreme IV) with an i7-3820. I just ordered 2 gtx 970s for SLI as an upgrade to my 680s in SLI, mainly for Project Cars, and I haven't really noticed a bottleneck in many games. The only thing that may be bottlenecking is Arma 3 but I'm thinking the 2GB 680s may be the root cause of my 5760X1080 resolution gaming. Ultimately you seem very knowledgeable so I was curious what your opinion on the aforementioned are, though I may be highjacking this thread a little bit. Thank you in advance.

 

[RedJaron]

I'll send you a PM. This thread is old and needs to die, and that's not a question fully pertinent to the 3770K

 

[Reynod]

Closing this as requested. Please refer to the later threads on comparable Intel Products. There is a Skylake thread open now.