Typically, a new CPUs is faster than it’s predecessor – it is just a question of whether is it by a little or a lot. The new Intel 5960X, however, is not typical because it sacrifices clock speed in order to add more cores. In this article we want to run a wide variety of benchmarks to find out what applications benefit from the additional cores and which suffer from the drop in clock speed.
X79 vs X99: What is new in X99 and Haswell-E
The X99 chipset is a major improvement over X79 adding native USB 3.0 support, more SATA 6Gb/s ports, DDR4 support, and plenty of other little updates. Haswell-E also adds a lot of improvements, but has an overall drop in core frequency that makes it not as clearly better than Ivy Bridge-E.
Delidding the 4790K for a quick look at the TIM
When the new Haswell K-series processors were still under NDA, there was a rumor that Intel was going to be moving back to soldering the CPU die to the heat transfer plate instead of using a TIM (thermal interface material). This rumor has been pretty well busted since we now know that these CPUs use what Intel is calling NGPTIM, or Next-Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material.
AMD A10-7850K Performance Review
While new computer hardware is almost always faster than the models they are replacing, it is often hard to get through all the marketing talk to find out exactly how much better they are. For that reason, we are going to be comparing the performance of the A10-7850K to multiple CPUs and video cards. In addition, since the ability to use high frequency RAM is often cited as an important feature of the A-Series APUs, we will also be looking how much performance gain you actually will see by using high frequency RAM.
Is CPU Base Frequency Still a Relevant Spec?
Using numerous technologies, CPUs are able to dynamically adjust their frequency based on how much load is being put on it. The end result is much greater efficiency, but it calls into question whether the base frequency of a CPU really means anything on modern processors since a CPU will rarely spend much of it’s time at that advertised frequency.
Technology Primer: Intel Ivy Bridge-E CPUs
With Ivy Bridge-E, Intel is finally moving their enthusiast CPUs to their newer 22nm manufacturing process. While this does not greatly increase the raw frequency that the CPUs are able to run at, it does allow them to draw less power while doing so. In addition to the smaller manufacturing process, the new line also has more L2 cache per core and improved memory support.
Technology Primer: Intel Haswell Desktop CPUs
Haswell is the codename for Intel’s 4th generation of processors and is the “tock” in Intel’s “tick-tock” development cycle. This means that it uses the same 22nm process as Ivy Bridge, but includes a different mounting socket and many refinements to the chip’s architecture.
Haswell Core i3 vs. i5 vs. i7 – Which is right for you?
Intel has been using the i3, i5, and i7 naming scheme for their CPUs for quite a while now, but what these labels mean tends to slowly change over time as new features are introduced or older ones get replaced. On top of this, the naming scheme between desktop and mobile CPUs is often different as well. In this article, we will go over what differentiates i3, i5, and i7 processors for both mobile and desktop Haswell CPUs.
Optimizing AMD Trinity for Budget Gaming
AMD’s Trinity APU – essentially a CPU and GPU combined into one unit-
is a great way to create a budget gaming system when using a discrete video card is not an option. However, due to the limited performance available with any onboard graphics, it is important to thoroughly optimize it to get the best possible performance. In this article, we will be looking at the components that have an influence on the performance of the integrated graphics in AMD’s Trinity APUs.
Ivy Bridge CPU TIM Paste Replacement
Even before launch of the Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs in April 2012, it was discovered that the CPUs were running a bit hotter than expected. The TIM paste was proven to be the culprit by the Japanese site PC Watch when they reported that by replacing the TIM paste they saw a load temperature drop of 8-11 *C at stock clock speeds, and an amazing 15-20*C drop in load temperatures when overclocked to 4.6 GHz.
We decided that it was time to do our own testing to see if anything has changed in recent months. The result was some very interesting data that caught us a bit by surprise.