If you’ve already read my launch coverage of Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture, then you probably also saw that I charted power consumption across all of our benchmarks, facilitating an average, a precise time measurement, and a representation of watt-hours based on the product of those two.
The only hiccup we encountered was that Intel’s older Core i7-2700K wrapped up faster than the Core i7-3770K. This was because the -2700K doesn’t support DirectX 11, and consequently skipped through 3DMark 11. Thus, I’m leaving Sandy Bridge out of this comparison altogether.
It’s typically pretty hard to read these line charts, particularly with more than 30 or 40 minutes worth of data from five different CPUs crammed in. However, the peaks are perhaps most telling. We clearly see that the 77 W Core i7-3770K spikes the highest, followed by the Core i5-3550, the Core i5-3570K and Core i5-3550S fairly close together, and finally the Core i5-3570T.

In an effort to make it easier to digest that consumption information, I averaged together the lines for each CPU. The result is surprisingly subtle.
As we’d expect, the Core i7-3770K uses the most power. The other two 77 W models follow behind closely. Interestingly, the 65 W Core i5-3550S ends up less than 1 W behind the Core i5-3570K. The most significant reduction comes from the Core i5-3570T, which drops down to 82.9 W of system power, on average.

Of course, the compromise you make when you cut power is generally a corresponding loss of performance. We see a gradual scale down from the Core i7-3770K at just under 38 minutes to the Core i5-3570T, which takes almost 47 minutes to finish our benchmark suite.
All of those results trump what we saw in my original review of the Core i7-3770K. In fact, even a Core i7-3960X mated to a GeForce GTX 680 took more than an hour and nine minutes to wrap up. So, what the heck happened? Knowing that the major difference between that platform and these is integrated graphics, that PCMark 7 is able to exploit Quick Sync, and that the results we garnered for PCMark were so much higher than anything seen before, it’s safe to assume that the most significant time-savings comes from Futuremark's synthetic metric.

We can take those average power consumption numbers and multiply them by the fraction of an hour taken to complete our in-house suite to come up with energy used in watt-hours.
What we find is that the two fastest processors—both K-series SKUs—use their superior performance to finish up workloads faster. The fact that they use slightly more power, on average, than the purported low-power parts is completely counteracted by their ability to drop back to idle sooner.
Although Core i5-3550 is the least-efficient model in our comparison, the –T and –S parts fail to impress. There’s really only one reason to buy either SKU, and I’ll get into that as we wrap up.
- Four Ivy Bridge-Based Core i5 CPUs, Compared
- Lining Up The Contenders: Are There 95 W IVBs?
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: PCMark 7
- Benchmark Results: SiSoft Sandra 2012
- Benchmark Results: Adobe CS 5.5 And Content Creation
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: File Compression
- Benchmark Results: Media Encoding
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11, Integrated Vs. Entry-Level Discrete
- Benchmark Results: Real-World Games
- Power Consumption And Max. Temperature
- Efficiency
- Low-Power CPUs: Specific Applications Only

Actually a lot of sites have shown just what Chris is talking about. Even a dual core Pentium with a HD6670 beats the top end Llano piece (a quad core) even with CFX of the IGP with a HD6570. Llano is great for some things but overall in DT its only a low end entry level product and is much weaker per core and per clock than Intels CPUs.
What Chris did was pulled the same charts from his first IB review and added in the HD2500 (the new low end Intel IGP) for comparison.
If someone cannot take this information and realize that its just for comparison and that its not to show anything better, then thats their problem. If this was a Llano article, or the Trinity article when it comes out, you better believe Chris will do everything to check ever performance aspect. But its not. Its an article to see if the T and S models are worth it.
Overll, llano is overrate in my book. We have barley sold any at my work place. Just doesn't have the pulling power like a CPU and discrete GPU does.
Because this is a story about the Intel chips. To the contrary, though, the AMD-based platform is more likely to bottleneck a discrete graphics card than the Intel one. AMD's strength is in the integrated graphics right now.
Because this is a story about the Intel chips. To the contrary, though, the AMD-based platform is more likely to bottleneck a discrete graphics card than the Intel one. AMD's strength is in the integrated graphics right now.
Actually a lot of sites have shown just what Chris is talking about. Even a dual core Pentium with a HD6670 beats the top end Llano piece (a quad core) even with CFX of the IGP with a HD6570. Llano is great for some things but overall in DT its only a low end entry level product and is much weaker per core and per clock than Intels CPUs.
What Chris did was pulled the same charts from his first IB review and added in the HD2500 (the new low end Intel IGP) for comparison.
If someone cannot take this information and realize that its just for comparison and that its not to show anything better, then thats their problem. If this was a Llano article, or the Trinity article when it comes out, you better believe Chris will do everything to check ever performance aspect. But its not. Its an article to see if the T and S models are worth it.
Overll, llano is overrate in my book. We have barley sold any at my work place. Just doesn't have the pulling power like a CPU and discrete GPU does.
I'm thinking in terms of a HTPC/"Super-Console". Low power, high gaming+A/V performance, quiet, 'instant'-on.
If you guys get the time to, of course.
I must admit, with a low to mid end card, Llano wouldn't really cause any bottlenecking issues, however it wouldn't be reasonable to expect Llano to perform the same or better than SB or IB i3s and i5s using the same card for most games. SB and IV are just faster even if Llano had a higher clock, period.
In instances where he HD4000 has enough GPU power, but the HD2500 does not, the 3570k will offer a lower total system power option than either of the t/s options once you factor in adding a GPU that meets your needs.
If you jut bought a 3570k and undervoled it, which IB seems very good at, the results wouldn't even be close.
Those processors may be the only ones that you could get into your mini-ITX board. For example, Foxconn H61S mini-ITX will only accept less than 65W CPUs http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Foxconn/H61S.html
However, seeing that the 77W CPUs top power draw is practically the same as 3550S, I wonder whether they will not fit in those mini-ITX boards.
That was a teaser from the original Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge.
What happened? Was this it?
I'm still very curious!
Thermal paste is only usefull when used to fill in air gaps between heat conductive materials so it can disipate more heat than air can. But replace metal with the paste? Look like someone tried to make more profit here by cutting down production cost. Next Bridge, please!
What I want to know, is take the i5 k series chips. Ivy starts out more efficient, but as you overclock them, due to voltage jumps on ivy - does sandy become more efficient at some point.