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Core i7-4770K: Did I Shave My Legs For This?

The Core i7-4770K Review: Haswell Is Faster; Desktop Enthusiasts Yawn
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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:

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  • 1 Hide
    phil_livesey , 1 June 2013 16:56
    Yet another competition not open to UK residents, despite this being on the UK site. Thankyou Tomshardware!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Pailin , 1 June 2013 18:06
    Sounds... disappointing after hearing about the Uber high LN OCs.
    Also thought I recently heard somewhere of others getting Nice 5GHz+ OC's on water and Very low vcore's - perhaps you guys have a Poor batch?
  • 0 Hide
    das_stig , 1 June 2013 19:46
    So once again, the UK site publicises a competition as part of a review and once again, it's limited to the US readers. Come on TH tis just sucks and shows that you don't give a toss about the rest of the world. The internet is a global community, it doesn't stop at the US border. Surely your programming monkies can code a conditional statement to blockout content if outside the U.S of Ass or are they to busy coding up more ad boxes ????
  • 0 Hide
    daglesj , 1 June 2013 21:01
    Guys, you are posting this on the useless and superfluous UK version.
    No one will be reading it.
  • 0 Hide
    mi1ez , 2 June 2013 11:01
    Quote:
    the only arrangement emerging today is the quad-core SoC

    SoC is pushing it a bit given it doesn't contain RAM, USB, network, etc.
  • 0 Hide
    bwrlane , 2 June 2013 14:08
    Great article, but what a let down. Ivy Bridge was already a disappointment, but Haswell is far more disappointing even than that. My 2700k based PC can manage 4.84GHz under full load, while remaining stable. My 3770k PC can do 4.74GHz. The IPC improvements are almost exactly compensated for by the lower attainable clock speed.
    But with Haswell, the world has gone backwards. Apparently, a 4770k can be pushed to 4.4GHz and that's it. That's a 7% reduction in clock speed. Since most benchmarks don't show a 7% improvement at stock, Haswell is slower than the Ivy Bridge that it replaced.
    For years we've been hearing that the answer to all our tech questions is "you have to wait for Haswell for that". But as this article shows, that was a lot of hot air.
  • 0 Hide
    doive1231 , 2 June 2013 19:33
    What a load of baloney we were spun about Haswell graphics. I read it would be a real step change and we should expect something special. Well, the comparisons between HD4000 and HD4600 are a real kick in the teeth. Nothing more that a few frames per second in most tests. Bah, Intel. And not I won't be getting Crystalwell.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 2 June 2013 21:45
    amd trinity gets bottlenecked by 1600 ram!!!
  • 0 Hide
    JRAtk94 , 2 June 2013 23:42
    Yay for AMD.
    Finally, AMD wins on price AND performance.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 3 June 2013 22:22
    TO ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS TEST: I DARE YOU "CLEVER" TESTERS TO TEST AMD TRINITY WITH 1866 RAM OR ABOVE, AND ALSO COMPARE WITH RICHLANT FLAGSHIP. ALSO, PLZ RUN GPU_CAPS_VIEWER -> THE JULIA SET WITH GPU OPENCL AND COMPARE WITH TRINITY! PERIOD!
  • 0 Hide
    Tedfoo25 , 5 June 2013 08:34
    I'm quite impressed actually. With a decent overclock, you are essentially getting a 3930k on the cheap with a socket that will have CPUs developed for it in the future.
  • 0 Hide
    mateau , 11 June 2013 15:22
    Haswell is old tech already. AMD just rekeased FX-9590 a 5 ghz 8 core MONSTER that is sure to stomp all over Hasbeen. And the FX-950 is unlocked for overclocking!!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:29
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, THANKS for the usual BIASED review!!
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • 0 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:51
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?