Core i7-4770K: Did I Shave My Legs For This?
AMD introduced us to its Kabini and Temash SoCs one week ago. Naturally, we were excited to learn more about the Jaguar architecture, to see GCN rolled into a truly low-power configuration, and most of all, to get our hands on the devices AMD was promising. Tablets with big graphics performance. Convertibles that’d invoke Intel’s Ultrabook initiative, but better. Detachable form factors unlike anything ever seen with an AMD APU inside. Oh, we couldn’t wait.
And then we returned home with a reference-class laptop. It wasn’t even touch-enabled. As a performance demonstration, it worked well enough, but that was hardly what we were hoping for after all of the build-up. Frankly, we were disappointed.
A week later, Intel has a potentially great story to tell. Its Haswell architecture is expected to dramatically stretch out what you can get from a notebook battery. It’s going to drop into innovative products that fill a gap between tablets and notebooks. We’re expecting certain models to boast graphics performance to rival mid-range mobile GPUs. However, you don’t get a sense of any of that from Intel’s Core i7-4770K, the implementation of Haswell Intel chose to lead off with.
The Core i7-4770K, specifically, is a bit faster than the -3770K it replaces—but only because of IPC improvements. It runs at the same 3.5 GHz and sports the same four cores otherwise. HD Graphics 4600 are a small step up, but not significant enough to overtake AMD’s $130 A10-5800K APU in any meaningful way. The vaunted Iris Pro Graphics 5200, with eDRAM, is currently reserved for BGA-based SKUs. And although it appears we received fairly overclockable samples of the -4770K, industry consensus amongst the companies with hundreds of these chips on-hand is that, at safe input voltages, 4.3 or 4.4 GHz should be OK. The luckiest enthusiasts might get 4.5 or 4.6 GHz. Skill won’t get you far; Haswell is all about luck of the draw due to its integrated voltage regulator.
So, for the second time in a week, we’re disappointed. Haswell has a lot to offer, just not to desktop enthusiasts. Intel’s attention is fully in the mobile space, and we can tell.
Remember back to December of 2011, when we published Intel Core i7-3930K And Core i7-3820: Sandy Bridge-E, Cheaper? I gave the -3930K our Best of Tom’s Hardware award. Although the Sandy Bridge-E-based part was $600 at the time, power users who bought one have been enjoying it for the last year and a half—and, at its stock clock rate, it’s still faster than a Core i7-4770K in threaded workloads. That might have saved you a $300+ upgrade on Ivy Bridge and now a complete platform overhaul for Haswell.
For those of you on Core i7-2700K or older, Core i7-4770K makes sense as part of a two- or three-year upgrade cycle. Otherwise, I see little reason to spend money on a desktop processor upgrade, a new motherboard, and a compliant power supply. Save those few hundred dollars and put them toward a Haswell-based convertible, perhaps (or something based on Temash, if AMD’s partners can show us a compelling platform). In the meantime, we’ll be waiting on a manifestation of Haswell that more accurately shows off the spirit of Intel’s efforts.
For a chance at winning your own Core i7-4770K-based PC, please click this link to enter our CyberPower PC/Tom's Hardware sweepstakes. The system's specs are as follows:
You may enter the sweepstakes only one time. If you enter more than once, duplicate entries will be deleted. Entries from contest entry sites will be deleted.
The Sweepstakes opens on June 1, 2013 7:00 AM PDT and closes June 14, 2013 7:00 AM PDT.
1 Winner Will Be Chosen Randomly; the prize will be One (1) CyberPower PC as configured below; approximate retail value: $2,400.00.
- Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50 GHz 8 MB Intel Smart Cache LGA-1150
- Asus Z87-A w/ Intel Z87 Express Chipset Mainboard
- AMD Radeon HD 7990 6 GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Dual GPU Video Card
- CoolIT LCS ECO II-120 mm FB Liquid Cooling
- Corsair 60 GB solid-state drive SATA 6Gb/s (Boot Drive)
- Corsair Vengeance 16 GB DDR3-1600 Dual Channel Memory
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DUE TO LEGAL REQUIREMENTS, THIS SWEEPSTAKES IS LIMITED TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE USA (EXCLUDING RI) AND 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER. UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL PERSONAL INFORMATION WILL ONLY BE USED TO QUALIFY AND CONTACT THE WINNER.
