Intel Core i7 3770K review

It's new CPU season at Intel with the launch of the Ivy Bridge family of CPUs and the new Intel Core i7-3770K. It's the quickest of the new breed and therefore likely to be the fastest CPU in the real world. That's because Intel's exotic six-core processors, like the Intel Core i7 3960X, are really only of interest to a small niche of money-no-object lunatics. They're just not good value. At the same time, the disappointing performance of the new AMD FX 8150 means AMD doesn't really have anything to keep the Intel Core i7 3770K honest. Instead, success and failure for the Core i7 3770K will hinge on its ability to convincingly swat aside the chip it replaces, ye olde Intel Core i7 2700K. At first glance, that might not be a trivial job. For starters, the new Intel Core i7 3770K still has four cores. And it's not clocked any higher than the 2700K. Nor does it have any additional cache memory. All of which is rather odd when you consider it sports Intel's spangley new 22nm process and thus 3D Tri-gate transistors. You might think the shrink from 32nm to 22nm would allow for a couple more cores, or some clockspeed. But apparently not. What you do get is the latest upgrade for Intel's HD Graphics. Now known as HD Graphics 4000, it gets an extra four execution units for a grand total of 16 along with Direct X 11 support. The QuickSync transcode engine gets a bit of a buff, too. It's welcome enough, but it's what we were hoping for. Then again, maybe the minor revisions Intel has applied to the four cores will release some extra performance. Likewise, even if Intel doesn't fancy ramping up the clockspeeds, there's nothing stopping us from clocking the twangers off those 22nm transistors.