In this article we're going to check gaming performance of Intels high-end LGA 1155 Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs when they're being supported by a Radeon HD 7970 graphics card from XFX. We're curious if there will be a measurable performance gap between these two CPUs regarding modern games or if the 100 MHz more clock speed and the architecutral changes don't even have an influence on gaming performance.
Specifications
| i7-3770K | i7-2600K | |
| Codename | Ivy Bridge | Sandy Bridge |
| Socket | LGA 1155 | LGA 1155 |
| Manufacturing | 22 nm | 32 nm |
| Transistors | 1.4 Billion | 995 Million |
| Die-size | 160 mm2 | 265 mm2 |
| Clock | 3.50 GHz (Turbo 3.90 GHz) | 3.40 GHz (Turbo 3.80 GHz) |
| Cores / Threads | 4C / 8T | 4C / 8T |
| Turbo | Yes (2.0) | Yes (2.0) |
| Bus Speed | 100 MHz | 100 MHz |
| Memory | DDR3 | DDR3 |
| Memory controller | Dual Channel | Dual Channel |
| QPI | -- GT/s | -- GT/s |
| L1 Execution Cache | 4x 32 KByte | 4x 32 KByte |
| L1 Data Cache | 4x 32 KByte | 4x 32 KByte |
| L2 Cache | 4x 256 KByte | 4x 256 KByte |
| L3 Cache | 8 MB shared | 8 MB shared |
| TDP | 77 Watt | 95 Watt |
| C1E Technology | Yes | Yes |
| Enhanced Intel Speed Step | Yes | Yes |
| Virtualisation | Vanderpool | Vanderpool |
| Instruction sets | MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 SSE4.2, AVX, EM64T |
MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 SSE4.2, AVX, EM64T |
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Test setup
| Motherboard | ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 (Sandy Bridge) ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe (Ivy Bridge) |
| Processors | |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX H2O @ 1'600 MHz CL 9-9-9-24 |
| Grapics Cards | |
| Storage | Corsair Force 3 120 Gigabyte |
| Power Supply | Enermax Max Revo 1350 Watt |
Software
- Futuremark 3DMark 11
- Performance
- Performance
- 1920 x 1080
- Shaders High
- Tessellation Extreme
- Max AA
- Max AF
- 1920 x 1080
- Tessellation High
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- DX10
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- Max AF
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- Max AF
- 1920 x 1080
- Max Details
- Max AA
- Max AF
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3DMark 11 - 3DMark Vantage
| 3DMark 11 Total | 3DMark 11 - Graphics | 3DMark 11 - Physics | |
| Core i7-3770K | 8'539 | 7'905 | 9'433 |
| Core i7-2600K | 7'836 | 7'773 | 8'705 |
| % difference | 8.97 % | 1.79 % | 8.36 % |
| 3DMark Vantage Total | 3DMark Vantage - Graphics | 3DMark Vantage - CPU | |
| Core i7-3770K | 30'370 | 32'370 | 25'405 |
| Core i7-2600K | 28'368 | 30'589 | 23'293 |
| % difference | 7.06 % | 5.82 % | 9.07 % |
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Unigine Heaven - Furmark - Stone Giant
| Unigine Heaven - Points | Unigine Heaven - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 1081 | 42.9 |
| Core i7-2600K | 1038 | 41.2 |
| % difference | 4.14 % | 4.13 % |
| Furmark - Points | Furmark - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 2'586 | 43 |
| Core i7-2600K | 2'585 | 43 |
| % difference | 0.04 % | 0.00 % |
| Stone Giant - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 86 |
| Core i7-2600K | 85 |
| % difference | 1.18 % |
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Crysis - Resident Evil 5
| Crysis - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 53.415 |
| Core i7-2600K | 50.665 |
| % difference | 5.43 % |
| Resident Evil 5 - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 155.6 |
| Core i7-2600K | 146.8 |
| % difference | 5.99 % |
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Call of Juarez - Far Cry 2
| Call of Juarez - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 70.5 |
| Core i7-2600K | 68.3 |
| % difference | 3.22 % |
| Far Cry 2 - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 104.80 |
| Core i7-2600K | 90.04 |
| % difference | 16.39 % |
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Street Fighter 4 - World in Conflict
| Street Fighter 4 - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 188.46 |
| Core i7-2600K | 185.50 |
| % difference | 1.60 % |
| World in Conflict - fps | |
| Core i7-3770K | 99 |
| Core i7-2600K | 87 |
| % difference | 13.79 % |
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Conclusion
In general it is particularly noticeable that on average there is almost no difference between the performance of these two CPUs. If you should be thinking about upgrading from a Core i7-2600K to a Core i7-3770K, we can tell you that the CPU really wont be the bottleneck in your system when it comes to gaming performance. If your computer should not be able to render games at sufficiently high framerates, then it's very likely that the GPU in your system is the bottleneck.Looking at the numbers and figures we see that the in Far Cry 2 we measured the biggest difference between the two CPUs. In this case the performance gap is a quite astonishing 16.39 percent. The next benchmark which clearly shows different results is World in Conflict with an almost 14 percent performance increase. Furthermore there is Futuremarks 3D Mark Vantage which shows a CPU score that is a little bit more than nine percent higher with Ivy Bridge. This score does say nothing about the actual frames per second which you get in a game. The difference between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge an be found with the clock speed that has been increased by 100 MHz and the architectural improvement which Ivy Bridge offers over Sandy Bridge.
As a closing remark we have to mention that there is no need to upgrade a
Core i7-2600K/2700K to a Core i7-3770K when it comes to gaming performance. The
overall advantage you get is in the single digit percentage. Therefore an
upgrade only makes sense if you want to squeeze even the last, tiny little bit
of performance out of your setup.
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