So was Ivy Bridge worth waiting for?

[zyzz]

So I read some reviews last night. Apparently the Ivy can get quite hot because of the solder they used or something.

So is it really worth waiting for now? I thought I would wait it out for my new gaming rig.

I am going to get an I5 2500k and I want to overclock in the future since I have never overclocked before.

 

[zyzz]

looking at that chart it doesn't look very good. I just checked an article on pc world as well.

i5 2500k sandy can do 5.0ghz safely.

 

[evan1715]

looking at that chart it doesn't look very good. I just checked an article on pc world as well.

i5 2500k sandy can do 5.0ghz safely.

u can get 4.8 if u try hard for the 3570K.
im pretty sure a 3570K @ 4.8GHz will beat a 2500K @ 5.0GHz
also dont forget that ivy bridge is new, which means new stuff.
uses PCI-E 3.0, USB 3.0, overclock RAM up to 2800MHz, less wattage, and hd 4000 graphics.

 

[zyzz]

I don't need HD 4000 graphics sine this is a gaming computer.

Sandy bridge has usb 3.0.

does it not have pci-e 3.0?

never overclocked anything and i don't know nothing about ram.

 

[bearclaw99]

Lol. About as much as Bulldozer was worth waiting for...

 

[jimmysmitty]

for people that had high end i5s or i7s from either of the first two generations( ie i7 920, i5 2500k), it wasnt worth waiting. but it was a tick not a tock for intel. so not much of an improvement was expected. though they did modify the architecture more than they normally do.

it still overclocks fantastically in my opinion. you can jump it up 500Mhz without touching voltage. thats awesome. but it does tend to top off at 4.8GHz some do 4.9GHz before there is a sharp increase in temp for any additional speed increase. so if you for some reason want 5GHz and will settle for nothing less go 2500k but a 3570k at 4.8 will be faster. and use less power.

ive read about 5 reviews on the new line of processors and if i wasn't already rocking a i7 950 i would have grabbed a 3570k in a heartbeat.

make sure you get a motherboard that supports virtu mvp. it will make your games much smoother.

If someone has a i7 920, its still worth it to go even to a Sandy Bridge setup as the overclocks are much higher (i.e. 4.5GHz on air is normal for SB, 4-4.2GHz of Nehalem) and the IPC is also much higher.

If someone had SB, it was not worth moving to IB as the performance difference was not enough. Haswel will be the next thing to upgrade to fram SB more than likley.

 

[zyzz]

Haswel? Let me guess that is after Ivy Bridge...

When is that coming out, in the fall?

Ivy Bridge doesn't look very good. I just watched another review on youtube.

The only good thing is the HD 4000 graphics. That is useless to me.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

Haswel? Let me guess that is after Ivy Bridge...

When is that coming out, in the fall?

Ivy Bridge doesn't look very good. I just watched another review on youtube.

The only good thing is the HD 4000 graphics. That is useless to me.

Haswll will be early to late Q2 2013.

Other than that, IB has PCIe 3.0, but, if you're running a single PCIe 3.0 card setup, there's no real advantage to that in games.

 

[zyzz]

so what, do I need Pci express 3.0?

 

[clindman]

i was only waiting in hopes of 2500k prices drops, and since there haven't been any, it surely was not worth the wait.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

so what, do I need Pci express 3.0?

LOL, No, not really with a single card in this current generation of GPU's, although, it can help a bit in SLI/Crossfire setups. Having it now is more like a future proofing kinda thing, I suppose, but most people will upgrade their whole system before PCIe 3.0 matters in a single card setup.

 

[HEXiT]

i have a i7 920 and its not worth the price to swap platform for the gains i would get.
less than 5% in games but 10-15% in other apps if i stick with my current gpu.
if i do an upgrade i expect a minimum of a 50% gain across the board and that wont happen till haswell and it may not happen then until they do a stepping change.
if you have an gen 1 i5 or i7 based platform then save your money as there will be little in the way of gains till 22nm matures...
currently the neph will handle any gfx card you throw at it so no theres no reason to get ivy bridge..

 

[zyzz]

yeah I thought Sandy Bridges will get cheaper.

So Sandy Bridges won't be produced anymore right? So I gotta jump on ship and get one before they are gone?

 

[jimmysmitty]

i have a i7 920 and its not worth the price to swap platform for the gains i would get.
less than 5% in games but 10-15% in other apps if i stick with my current gpu.
if i do an upgrade i expect a minimum of a 50% gain across the board and that wont happen till haswell and it may not happen then until they do a stepping change.
if you have an gen 1 i5 or i7 based platform then save your money as there will be little in the way of gains till 22nm matures...
currently the neph will handle any gfx card you throw at it so no theres no reason to get ivy bridge..

You are forgetting many factors. For one, SB does about 20% better performance in some apps, most games is 5-10% that is per clock. Then there is overclocking. Most i7 920s would hit 4GHz, on very high end air cooling while most 2500/2600Ks will hit 4.4-4.5GHz on the same air cooling. Thats a 500MHz advantage which adds to overall performance. Then the lowe power usage helps as well.

It was worth moving to SB if you had a first gen i5/i7. It was not worth moving to Gulftown from Nehalem as it was a die shrink. Its not worth moving to IB if you have SB. Die shrinks are nice but overall not really worth moving to unless you have very old hardware like a Core 2 Quad.

As for the 50%, if Haswell pulls a SB it will. Remember it is a new arch, not a die shrink and therefore has more potential. Also, a new stepping will not increase performance. Most stepping improvements are TDP and erreta based. Sometimes it leads to better overclocks (Q6600 G0 or i7 920 D0) but not always. The main performance gains for Haswel will be in the arch changes and tweaks.

yeah I thought Sandy Bridges will get cheaper.

So Sandy Bridges won't be produced anymore right? So I gotta jump on ship and get one before they are gone?

Sandy Bridge will probably start their EoL phase. That means Intel will start to ramp production down and then look to convert the FABs to 22n or whatever they deem necessary. I would say that by the end of this year we wont be able to get many Sandy Bridge CPUs. AMD stopped production of Phenom II and Athlon II end of year last year and the stock ran out very fast. Within a month we were not able to get any except the lowest end Athlon II X2s.

Of course Intel does have a much larger FAB base and is able to produce more than AMD but the supply will run out very fast.

 

[zyzz]

well I don't know what to do. I am watching many reviews.

Sandy Bridge still seems better for gaming and even in general. unless your a noob and wants onboard graphics. then again why would you buy such a high end processor. buy a laptop or a computer from bestbuy or something.

 

[jimmysmitty]

well I don't know what to do. I am watching many reviews.

Sandy Bridge still seems better for gaming and even in general. unless your a noob and wants onboard graphics. then again why would you buy such a high end processor. buy a laptop or a computer from bestbuy or something.

You realize that you can use both the IGP and a GPU at the same time with the Lucid Virtu? ANd the Lucid MVP uses the IGP as a sort of VSYNC frame buffer to help keep the FPS smooth.

So you can have the best of both worlds, use the IGP for quick sync and then your GUP as the main game power. I wish they had a way to use it like laptops do with the IGP for basic stuff anf the GPU for gaming. Would be a great power saver.

 

[InvalidError]

so it seems like ivy is crap if your a gamer.

Is there even one game currently out there or in the foreseeable future that even requires overclocking to reach beyond reasonable FPS (say 60+) even on a stock-clocked i5-3570 when fitted with a powerful enough GPU to be CPU-bound?

Most games are optimized to work more than reasonably well on a average-ish gaming PCs. Playing them at the performance level intended by the designers (usually vsync) rarely requires overclocking on reasonably recent platforms. Aside from bragging rights for high FPS with vsync off (no use beyond benchmarking) and the uber-gamers who might be able to tell the difference of frame rates beyond 60fps, overclocking for gaming has little to no use.

So Ivy at stock clocks is very much viable for gamers who don't have a vsync-off FPS OCD.

 

[Light Plasma]

Thank you jimmysmitty, exactly the info I was looking for (the combination of the two units).

Nice information filled post!

 

[HEXiT]

You are forgetting many factors. For one, SB does about 20% better performance in some apps, most games is 5-10% that is per clock. Then there is overclocking. Most i7 920s would hit 4GHz, on very high end air cooling while most 2500/2600Ks will hit 4.4-4.5GHz on the same air cooling. Thats a 500MHz advantage which adds to overall performance. Then the lowe power usage helps as well.

It was worth moving to SB if you had a first gen i5/i7. It was not worth moving to Gulftown from Nehalem as it was a die shrink. Its not worth moving to IB if you have SB. Die shrinks are nice but overall not really worth moving to unless you have very old hardware like a Core 2 Quad.

As for the 50%, if Haswell pulls a SB it will. Remember it is a new arch, not a die shrink and therefore has more potential. Also, a new stepping will not increase performance. Most stepping improvements are TDP and erreta based. Sometimes it leads to better overclocks (Q6600 G0 or i7 920 D0) but not always. The main performance gains for Haswel will be in the arch changes and tweaks.



Sandy Bridge will probably start their EoL phase. That means Intel will start to ramp production down and then look to convert the FABs to 22n or whatever they deem necessary. I would say that by the end of this year we wont be able to get many Sandy Bridge CPUs. AMD stopped production of Phenom II and Athlon II end of year last year and the stock ran out very fast. Within a month we were not able to get any except the lowest end Athlon II X2s.

Of course Intel does have a much larger FAB base and is able to produce more than AMD but the supply will run out very fast.

m8 gulftown is nephelem i7 and xeon are exactly the same architecture just 2 more cores pretty much, as far as i know ... i didnt forget anything. i oc my cpu to exactly 20% thus my smaller numbers for the difference in percentages to the stock clock of the sb parts... really there isnt that much in them when you consider the SB is 20% faster in most things across the board but it runs at 15%+ faster clocks the 920 run in at 3.6 can easily keep up with a sb running at 3.4 thus my reasoning for saying its not worth it. if you have a first gen i5 or i7 quad

 

[zyzz]

You realize that you can use both the IGP and a GPU at the same time with the Lucid Virtu? ANd the Lucid MVP uses the IGP as a sort of VSYNC frame buffer to help keep the FPS smooth.

So you can have the best of both worlds, use the IGP for quick sync and then your GUP as the main game power. I wish they had a way to use it like laptops do with the IGP for basic stuff anf the GPU for gaming. Would be a great power saver.

Never heard lf Lucid MVP, must be something new.

I don't use vsync at all.