New Ivy Bridge processors released today!

[WhiteFireDragon]

IB will get released in the morning for many stores. I'll be grabbing one for myself . Based on what I've read so far, these new IB will be great for lower power consumption and heat at modest overclocks, which is good for us here. However, Sandy Bridge still wins in the max overclocking department at lower temperatures. Here's where you can get a few of them, I'll try updating this OP as they become available. Best deal is currently microcenter B&M.

Microcenter
https://email.microcentermedia.com/PS!F ... @yahoo.com

i7-3770K $290
i7-3770 $260
i5-3570K $190
i5-3450 $160


Amazon

i7-3770K $350
i7-3770 $320
i7-3770S $342
i5-3570K $250
i5-3550 $220
i5-3450S $222
i5-3450 $205


Newegg

i7-3770K $350
i7-3770 $320
i7-3770S $320
i5-3570K $250
i5-3550 $220
i5-3450S $200
i5-3450 $200

[lodestar]

However, Sandy Bridge still wins in the max overclocking department at lower temperatures.

No it doesn't. I was at an Ivy Bridge launch event yesterday which included demonstrations of overclocking up to 5Ghz. This was with an i7-3770K, MSI Z77A GD65 motherboard and Dark Rock Pro cooler (think Noctua NH-D14). In open air (test bench setup) 5Ghz was resulting in CPU temps of around 75C. The opinion there was that IB could be overclocked to higher levels at lower temps than Sandy Bridge, with lower CPU voltage increases. The event was sponsored by MSI, so loads of their GD65s to play with. I was mainly interested in the BIOS fan controls of the Z77A GD65 but from what I could see essentially there were none apart from the ability to set a CPU target temperature. This may have been because the Dark Rock has three pin fans. MSI were not surprisingly extolling the virtures of their Z77 range and claim that the GD65 has particularly good power supply components. I have seen a number of reviews that suggest that the GD65 has lower power consumption that many other Z77 boards, maybe even the lowest so there might be something in this.

[St Veronus]

Just ordered my i7-3770K off Amazon, and a few other parts (SSD & PSU). Now to wait for some more z77 boards to be released that I like.

[Steve_Y]

No it doesn't. I was at an Ivy Bridge launch event yesterday which included demonstrations of overclocking up to 5Ghz. This was with an i7-3770K, MSI Z77A GD65 motherboard and Dark Rock Pro cooler (think Noctua NH-D14). In open air (test bench setup) 5Ghz was resulting in CPU temps of around 75C. The opinion there was that IB could be overclocked to higher levels at lower temps than Sandy Bridge, with lower CPU voltage increases.

That goes against just about every review and test of Ivy Bridge that I've seen online. Even with decent water cooling people have been getting unacceptably high temperatures before they hit 5Ghz. Many overclockers have been bitterly disappointed by Ivy Bridge and are planning to stick with Sandy Bridge instead.

This review at Hardware Canucks is pretty typical:

To put it simply, we think that the term "blazing hell inferno" might be short-selling Ivy Bridge's heat problem once you cross a certain threshold. Past 1.30-1.35V temperatures skyrocket, so we're going to recommend that everyone on air-cooling, even high-end air-cooling, stay in the 1.25V-1.30V range. Most chips shouldn't have any problems hitting 4.5GHz with 1.20V or less, which is awesome for your average casual overclocker, but scaling gets progressively worse as you go above these levels.

Our overclock was stable, we threw every app we could at it and had four 2-3 hour gaming sessions, but we aren't going to hide the fact that during the one hour AIDA64 stress test at least one core hit a truly absurd 101°C, while the others routinely reached into the 90's. At least that proves that these new chips are resilient to short-term heat.

I think the original post is correct. Ivy Bridge is a nice upgrade for people like us, but not on a par with the previous generation for the maximum performance overclockers.

[lodestar]

As was stated at the launch event, Ivy Bridge CPUs need less voltage than Sandy Bridge processors to achieve the same level of overclock. So reviewers who simply applied Sandy Bridge levels of CPU voltage as a matter of course might well have seen untypical results. I suspect that this is exactly what Hardware Canucks did and to quote from their review "...Overclocking an Ivy Bridge system is going to be identical as on Sandy Bridge...". Clearly it isn't. I note from the same review that a Z77 motherboard was being used with a beta BIOS which might have been a factor. In addition I can see from the CPUID screenshot in the review that they were using an ES (Engineering Sample) Ivy Bridge CPU, and an issue has been identified with some of them which could have led to higher temperatures than normal under stress.

I can only repeat that at the event on Saturday there were several systems running at 5 Ghz with temps being reported at around 75C. More than that, because these were open test bed setups you could actually feel the temperature of the heatsinks and they didn't seem excessively hot. The only way of checking whether a CPU is ES or retail is with something like CPUID. I actually checked the i7 3770K CPU on the Ivy Bridge system I used, and it was a retail processor.

[CA_Steve]

It'll be interesting to see if there are any differences between the retail/production cpu's and all of the ES units supplied for the reviews...like: do the production units use the crappy TIM or did they go with solder reflow between the cpu and it's heat spreader.

[WhiteFireDragon]

However, Sandy Bridge still wins in the max overclocking department at lower temperatures.

No it doesn't. I was at an Ivy Bridge launch event yesterday which included demonstrations of overclocking up to 5Ghz. This was with an i7-3770K, MSI Z77A GD65 motherboard and Dark Rock Pro cooler (think Noctua NH-D14). In open air (test bench setup) 5Ghz was resulting in CPU temps of around 75C. The opinion there was that IB could be overclocked to higher levels at lower temps than Sandy Bridge, with lower CPU voltage increases.

This may be true for this one particular one they tested, but one processor doesn't represent the whole line of Ivy Bridge. And even then, I don't believe this is just a random sample, it's probably a cherry picked one exactly for these kinds of events. There needs to large sample population to get a feel of how these new IB really behave. What I posted in the OP about how IB tends to have a lower max overclock and higher heat at higher overclocks is all speculation so far, but this is based on early reviews. Once a larger user based review comes in (starting today), we'll get a more general feel for these chips.

[lodestar]

There is a report on another reviewer's experience of the i7 3770K at 5Ghz with the MSI Z77 GD65 motherboard here http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-z77ag ... d-review/7. Interestingly the CPU-Z screenshot shows that this was an ES processor. Clearly running eight instances of Prime 95 is stressing the CPU to the absolute max. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the machines I saw at the launch event (around 20 of them) were all fitted with the Dark Rock Pro which is a twin 120mm fan cooler somewhat similar to the Noctua NH-D14. There was one machine at the event fitted with a Corsair H80 cooler, again twin fans. So cooling would seem to be a critical factor if you really want to push the processor this hard.

Edit: Guru3D has reviewed and overclocked five Z77 boards with the same setup and i7 3770K processor. Maximum overclocks achieved were ECS Z77H2-AX 4600 MHz; Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H 4800 MHz; ASUS Maximus V Gene, ASUS Sabertooth Z77 and MSI Z77A-GD65 5000 MHz. So with all the other factors being equal the make and model of motherboard also has a bearing here.