
It turns out that PCMark yields some of the most interesting results—and not necessarily in a good way.
If you flip back to the twelfth page of Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge, you’ll notice that the Core i7-3770K scores here are higher than in that story. Moreover, the Core i5-3570K blows away the Core i7-2700K in this story and the launch coverage as well. What. The. Heck. Right? We were using a flippin’ GeForce GTX 680 for the launch, and basic HD Graphics 4000 here. You mean to tell me that, according to PCMark, the system with integrated graphics is better?
Let’s step through the sub-tests for more detail. We did some digging on this and have answers.

Alright. Productivity comes first, including Storage, Web browsing/decrypting, and Text editing components. Sandy Bridge winds up behind four different Ivy Bridge-based setups, three of which are Core i5s, and two of which employ HD Graphics 2500. It’s frankly difficult to imagine that this would reflect real-world performance, and we’ll keep these numbers in mind as we start firing up our own workloads.

Here’s where things start to get really wonky (though the oddest results are yet to come). Although the Creativity suite includes Storage, Image manipulation, and Video transcoding workloads, there’s a clear step down from HD Graphics 4000-, 3000-, and 2500-equipped CPUs.
Naturally, our first question was to Futuremark: is PCMark benefiting from Quick Sync? The company’s response: yes, using Microsoft’s Media Foundation transforms, hardware acceleration is utilized. Futuremark does not make public the weightings for each piece of the test, but it seems unlikely that one Quick Sync-enabled Ivy Bridge chip with HD Graphics 2500 should score less than half of a Quick Sync-enabled Ivy Bridge chip with HD Graphics 4000, particularly when transcoding is only one of three variables.

The Entertainment test is broader; it includes Video playback, Storage, Graphics, and Web browsing. All of these integrated graphics engines support DirectX 10, at least, so none of the tests are getting dropped. And yet, there’s still a huge gap between the top and bottom, clearly segmented by HD Graphics 4000, 3000, and 2500. We’ll simply have to accept that Graphics (gaming) and Video playback are the biggest determinants of performance in this one.

Futuremark uses three pieces for its Computation suite: Video transcoding (downscaling), Video transcoding (high-quality), and Image manipulation. Not only does the test consequently suggest that the HD Graphics 4000-equipped processors are more than five times faster than the ones with HD Graphics 2500, but, again flipping back to Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge, the benchmark puts a Core i5 almost four times above a Core i7-3960X-based machine with a GeForce GTX 680.
Bottom line: because PCMark is a black box, there’s no way to see how heavily Futuremark weighs video transcoding in its sub-tests. But judging by the disparity between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, the importance placed on Quick Sync is way too high. Will this benchmark show up again in the future? Probably, but more selectively, now that we know any fixed-function transcode acceleration can throw off its results so blatantly.
- 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.