And Here Are Intel's Desktop Ivy Bridge CPUs

Intel may be trying to compensate for how spread out its first Ivy Bridge processors were, launch-wise. With fourteen of them having come out at the same time, we have quite a few desktop units to look over.

Computex 2012 will happen in about a week or so, in Taipei, Taiwan. There, many mobile PCs will be launched, as well as desktops. Similarly, desktop vendors will update their existing offers with whatever processors come out. The Core i5 units now out probably won't get so much attention on the part of most custom PC suppliers though. They aren't high-end gaming hardware parts after all. We're sure there will be quite a few people on the DIY market interested in them though, as well as on the business front. We'll start with the cheaper processors first ($184 / 148 Euro): Core i5-3470, Core i5-3470T and Core i5-3470S.

The names suggest the latter two are variations of the first, and the identical price would support that assumption. That is not truly the case, however. For one, the Core i5-3470T has only two cores. It is the only dual-core desktop chip in the new lineup in fact. Its advantage lies in its very low power consumption (35W), although the L3 cache memory isn't quite as high as on the others (3 MB instead of 6MB). The chip does have four threads though, and its clock speed is of 2.9 GHz for the x86 cores (3.5 GHz in Turbo Boost) and 650 MHz for the GPU (1,050 MHz Turbo Boost). Speaking of which, the GPU is HD 2500 instead of HD 4000.

The Core i5-3470 is a quad-core, quad-thread 3.2 GHz CPU (3.6 GHz) with a 77W TDP and the Intel 2500 graphics working at 650 MHz / 1,100 MHz. As for the Core i5-3470T, it is a 65W quad-core / quad-thread unit with 2.9 GHz / 3.6 GHz speeds and GPU performance identical to the one above. The other three chips in the line are Core i5-3570, Core i5-3570S and Core i5-3575S. All of them have four cores and four threads, but that is where the similarities end. 

In the above order, the TDPs are of 77W, 65W and 65W. What's more, the Core i5-3575S boasts Intel HD 4000 instead of 2500, although the clocks are the same as on the others mentioned up to now. The x86 cores are another matter entirely though. The i5-3570 is a 2.4 / 3.8 GHz unit (650 MHz / 1,150 MHz GPU), the i5-3570S works at 3.1 / 3.8 GHz and the i5-3575S achieves 2.9 / 3.6 GHz. Finally, the prices are as follows: $205 (165 Euro) for the i5-3570, $205 (165 Euro) for the i5-3570S and $201 (162 Euro) for Core i5-3475S.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview