Intel Haswell 4th Generation CPU: i5-4670K and i7-4770K Review

CPU by leeghoofd @ 2013-06-01

Intel keeps on pushing their technology to the max. Even while being the performance leader in most hardware segments, their engineers are driven to (re)design new architectures to satisfy the end-user's desire for more speed. However the focus with this CPU generation is not purely based on raw speed; this 4th generation main objective is to reduce the power consumption to the max, to gain grounds in the portable market. Rumor that Intel was pulling out of the desktop market has partially become reality. Not leaving the desktop market for what it is, as they will continue to develop the chipsets and processors. With Haswell we see the last releases of Intel's own motherboard branch. The market share of notebooks, ultrabooks, tablets and mini enclosures are steadily taking over the market share of the desktop. Enhanced battery life, a result of a reduced power consumption, an enhanced onboard graphic chip and the reduction of required motherboard components are the major trademarks of Intel's 4th generation processors. Time to put both K skews to the test.

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Ring Bus Testing

Time to find out how big the influence is of the Ring bus speed. Due to the fact the ring bus can't exceed the total CPU speed we opted to OC the CPU to 4500MHz and drop down the Ring multiplier few notches and then conduct a few basic tests.

Test setup:

  • Intel Z87 Mainboard
  • Intel i7-4770K@4500MHz 1.3Vcore
  • Corsair 4Gb 1600C8
  • ASUS 7970HD - 13.4 Catalyst drivers
  • Ring Bus multipliers at 39x, 42x and 45x

 

 

Dropping down 600MHz in Superpi32M results in a 1.4 second slower calculating time.  Weirdly enough in AIDA we notice close to no increase in bandwidth. The same accounts for Cinebench Release 11, all within the margin of error.

 

 

 

 

In the encoding test however we see a similar performance gain with the higher Ring Bus speed. The subtest and the total score of Futuremark's 3DMARK11 also get a tiny boost from when running the higher Ring Bus speed. Running the GPU benchmark in Crysis II tells us the Ring bus speed hardly influences games.

 

 

 

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