Intel Launches Long Awaited Ivy Bridge CPUs Today

The NDA lifted on Intel's new line of Ivy Bridge processors and with that came a flood of reviews. I've taken a look at some of them and have come away with this take-home message:

·         Official reviews confirm many of the previews and leaks

·         It's an evolutionary upgrade, not revolutionary - it's a "tick" processor. It doesn't make your Sandy Bridge system obsolete overnight and there's no pressing reason to upgrade unless you do video encoding and can use the new Quick Sync feature

·         Overclocks to about the same as SB, or actually a bit less for "standard" overclocking

·         Better for extreme LN2-style overclocking. This is of course only of interest to a tiny handful of enthusiasts who are shooting for overclocking records

·         Up to 10% single threaded improvement, 40% IGP improvement, in round figures

·         Same gaming performance as SB - save your money

·         Worthwhile new features such as: PCI-E 3.0, native USB 3.0, Quick Sync, SRT, solid efficiency, decent 24/7 overclocks

·         Same price as equivalent SB part that it replaces and more future proof, as far as that goes. Buy IB in preference to SB if starting from scratch or an old system

·         Sweet spot enthusiast CPUs are i5-3570K (replaces i5-2500K) and i7-3770K (replaces i7-2700K)

·         When buying your next laptop go IB, no question. The power use and GPU improvements make a serious difference here

·         Haswell, the next architecture from IB, should deliver significant CPU performance improvements and is worth waiting for if you have an SB system

·         The performance lead over AMD's best is now huge, making Intel the only way to go for high performance processors. Sad, but true

·         I have an i7-2700K, but I still want one