Intel Releases 3rd Generation Core Processors

Intel this week has launched its long-awaited Ivy Bridge processors, ushering in both 22nm and tri-gate era. As the third-generation Core product, it’d be expected that some nice features would be present and performance improved, and that’s just what we got. While performance improvements are not going to be major in most cases, Ivy Bridge proves to be the best processor Intel has ever released, for a number of reasons.

Due in part to being in the middle of a move, our review of Ivy Bridge will be posted at a later date.

With this launch, Intel is releasing one Extreme Edition model (i7-3920XM, mobile), eight Core i7s and five Core i5s. In addition, we’re also welcoming some new chipsets, with Z77 and H77 to be the most popular desktop variants.

Part of Intel’s “Tick” phase, Ivy Bridge brings on a 22nm process as mentioned above, along with the “3D” tri-gate transistors. It improves upon the IGP, introducing DirectX 11 support and also the ability to run three monitors. The platform brings on SATA 6Gbit/s, PCIe 3.0 and the long-awaited integrated USB 3.0.

Of all the processors released with this launch, the five shown above are considered to be Intel’s “Standard” offerings (as in, not low power). The i7-3770K sits on top with a price tag of $313 and clock speed of 3.5GHz, while the i5-3450 acts as the base with a price tag of $174 and clock speed of 3.1GHz. Like always, Intel basically has a processor for everyone here, so if HyperThreading doesn’t matter to you, you can save a bit of money.

As we’d hope, Ivy Bridge continues Intel’s superiority in the overclocking scheme of things. The newer processors get hotter than the previous-gen, however, so extra caution needs to be taken, especially with regards to how much voltage you push into them.