Intel Core i7-3770K – Ivy Bridge and the 3D transistor is here

Power consumption

To say that we’ve looked forward to the power measurements on Intel’s new Ivy Bridge platform is an understatement. Today Intel is introducing their first microprocessors which is not only manufactured with an effective 22 nanometer technology, it is also premiere for the manufacturers so called 3D transistor – also known as the Tri-Gate transistor from Intel. We have earlier in the article walked you through exactly what makes the new 3D transistor so special, but the bottom line is that Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors should consume less power than the previous generation – despite higher performance.

Like we also addresseded earlier in the article Intel has chosen to sell their new Ivy Bridge processors with a TDP value at 95W, but the processors that launches today – the flagship Core i7-3770K included – shouldn’t exceed a TDP value of 77W we should be able to see significantly lower power consumption with Intel’s new processor.

Without any direct load we can’t see any big difference compared to the Sandy Bridge platform and that they don’t reach the same low levels as AMD in this part is pretty easily explained with that AMD with their Llano processors allow both the clock frequencies and the voltages to be lowered substantially more than Intel, 800 MHz on AMD compared to 1 600 MHz on Intel’s processors.

When it comes to power consumption at higher loads we are really impressed by Intel’s new 22 nanometer technology and Ivy Bridge. In test after test we’ve seen how the Intel Core i7-3770K has gone by it’s predecessors in the Sandy Bridge family and at several occasions it has been at war with the enthusiast platform Sandy Bridge-E. Although there hasn’t been any revolutionary differences in performance compared to the previous generations middle segment platform, but when we take a look at the power consumption of Intel’s new processors the circle is completed.

The Intel Core i7-3770K’s power consumption is as low as Intel’s entry-level models in the Core i5-2xxx series where we have to settle for four CPU cores without HyperThreading and substantially lower clock frequencies. Despite higher performance than its predecessor, the Core i7-2700K, Intel’s new mid-level flag ship consumes between 15 and 16 wattd less power in our tests, which is almost exactly the differences that the TDP specifications implies. Worth noticing is that our sample of the Core i7-2700K is of a significantly newer stepping than our older 2600K model, where we can see what optimizations Intel has done in their older 32 nanometer technology since 2700K consumes less power despite a higher clock frequency.

Sadly enough everything is not good with Intel’s new Ivy Bridge architecture, the new manufacturing technology actually has some unexpected side effects, whicht we get illustrated very clearly when we move on the the overclocking part of the article.