Intel Haswell i4770K Review And Benchmarks

Conclusion And Final Thoughts 

Intel is now competing in the market that AMD has until recently has not really been challenged in the APU market of having everything on the CPU die, including graphics, which for the mobile segment is a giant and widely growing market.

This launch to me was obviously a necessary move for Intel, but I feel for the desktop that it is not all that must of a leap as it brings a bit of performance gains and a few new technical specs. In my eyes in the mobile sector where onboard graphics, battery life and obviously heat are things that have great importance in that market and now Intel is finally taking it very seriously and Haswell for mobile shows it clearly as we will show you tomorrow. Products like the i74770R should prove to be very interesting to see in the AIO market. For those users who are just building a system there is no reason not to go with the i7-4770K and accompanying LGA-1150 motherboard, as it is a great solution for home or office use and for the gamers or those who edit photo/video and need decent productivity from their platform. For users with a Sandy Bridge or older system if you were thinking about upgrading Haswell has a lot more to offer than Sandy or its predecessors.

For those users who already own a good Z77 motherboard and an I7-3770K there is really no reason to rush to the update path to Haswell as performance scores in gaming with a discreet graphics card showed very little improvement. In fact our tests show that on average only 1 to 3 FPS was gained by switching the new i7-4770K. In the desktop arena I feel that Haswell is a small bump in performance for the serious gamer or enthusiast to go crazy about and even though the HD-4600 graphics has better power management and other features that are cool, they are much better suited to improving the AIO and laptop market that would take advantage of such things.  Don’t get me wrong Intel’s new HD-4600 and 5200 graphics solutions will have a place in the market and the HD-4600 we tested was able to run games at a resolution of 1920X180 when the HD-4000 could barely run so its potential is there. AMD better watch they’re six as Intel is now delving into their market as they see the desktop slow down and all in one system’s become the mainstream. Desktop will never go away, but it will become a more niche market in the future.

The ability to hook up 3 monitors via the onboard graphics is pretty cool as is Intel’s wireless display or WiDi , but WiDi will have to wait until monitors have that technology installed to be of any really cool use.  Overclocking will also be a bit different than Ivy due to the fact that different things can overheat and kill your overclock if not controlled properly.  We did some overclocking with JJ of ASUS fame and the results we were seeing using a liquid cooling system were on average in the 4.7 range. This was achieved with the voltage turned to 1.20V, which does raise the core temps enough that air-cooling would not be a feasible solution to keep the CPU cool enough for anything other than moderate results without increasing the voltage. Haswell has just launched this morning, and I am sure as time goes by and everyone get more familiar with how to tinker with it maybe we can get some better results. Haswell for the desktop for me is a very interesting, but not too much in the way of performance improvements make it a hard choice to turn to in a tight economy as an upgrade path unless you have fairly dated equipment. I am really looking forward to Haswell in the mobile and AIO environment where I feel the major improvements will really shine and be valuable. One thing good is that Intel will maintain the price of the i7-4770K to that of the previous generation i7-3770K and for those looking to get into their first build it is a solid choice for the mainstream market.

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