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Intel Core i7-4770K CPU Review - Intel Haswell For Desktop (Part 1)

9/8/2013 9:15:26 AM

Finally, after a very long and anxious wait, one of the fourth generation Core processors for desktops, which is made based on the new Haswell architecture, has made its first arrival, with considerably higher performance, better energy-efficiency, wonderful overclocking. Could all of these be true? What happened?

Today, the first day of summer, is also the day Intel lifts the embargo on publications about performance of the Haswell, Intel CPU’s new generation. All of the great number of Haswell-platform products will be officially introduced in just three days, but such dramatic change can hardly be made in such short period of time. Therefore, in our review, we will just cover one particular model, which is really expected, right now.

Intel Core i7-4770K

Intel Core i7-4770K

It truly is a very long wait as we have to be patient longer than usual. According to the tick-tock strategy of Intel during the period of introducing the new CPU design, one year is required between each tick and each tock. However, the tick-tock model is almost forgotten nowadays, because a longer period of time would be needed for Intel to upgrade its microarchitecture. It can be expected, as there is no equivalent rival competing with Intel on the market of x86 CPUs. The long-time opponent AMD has just left the market of high-performance CPU for the other low-price and niche products. And now Intel, to whom most of the x86 CPU market belong, has to encounter the global problem such as the decrease of x86-based architecture popularity and solutions in general.

This also means that Intel now has to prove its ability of not only a developer and manufacturer of high-performance CPU designs but also a transformer who can transfer its long-time experience into emerging products of mobile devices at the cost of classic PCs. It is not AMD that Intel has to face now as a real rival but the ARM architecture CPU manufacturers, which have been keeping track of the newest trend and now are the pioneers.

We dedicated a special review to research on the Haswell microarchitecture thoroughly. Please bear this in mind that higher performance is not the primary target of Haswell, but in contrast, the new design is aiming to lower the thermal and power requirements, making the new CPU not only appropriate for traditional computers but also modern compact, light and slim devices like Ultrabooks, transformer notebooks and tablet PCs.

The product image

The product image

Although the developer has changed their priority clearly, we, PC enthusiasts, still have not changed enough to give up on the classic PC, especially when brand new utility might not really suitable for its flexibility and performance. This is the reason that we decided to start our review with one of the fourth generation Core processors with Haswell microarchitecture by having a closer look at the classic CPUs first. After taking many current situations into consideration, we even do not expect a higher performance, clock rates or overclocking potential. There is things which is more important to check, which is whether the developer has not introduced some changes in CPU design to enhance its power but in return made it less suitable for desktops compared to the time-tested Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge series.

Something has enriched our knowledge. We have heard about a slowed-down L3 cache, about moving an important part of the voltage regulator from the mainboard to the CPU that might cause less flexibility in favor of settings, about the fundamentally new LGA1150 platfor, and about problems of compatibility with older PSUs. This list of flaws might be even extended when we check the Haswell more clearly. It might be the most interesting things in our review now, in which we will review on the i7-4770K, the senior desktop fourth generation Core processor from Intel.

Brief tour around the Microarchitecture

Although the Haswell microarchitecture is supposed to represent the “tock” cycle, i.e. to introduce considerable innovations while retaining the same manufacturing technology, it doesn’t follow Intel’s established pattern. The Haswell is meant to optimize Core processors in terms of energy efficiency rather than high performance. Intel is going to use the new CPU design for mobile gadgets in the first place, traditional PCs and servers being of secondary importance.

Although the Haswell microarchitecture is believed to represent the “tock” cycle, which means to introduce considerable enhancements while the manufacturing technology is still unchanged, it does not follow Intel’s established pattern. Haswell aims to optimizing Core processing in terms of energy efficiency rather than high performance. Intel prioritizes to use the new CPU design for mobile gadgets, and then come the traditional PCs.

Haswell being fast is actually a fact. It can be used to make the CPUs with the normal performance/power consumption ratios, but they are just sub-products since the main product is the new low-wattage core CPUs. That is why we do not really care about most of the innovations implemented in the Haswell microarchitecture. We can only tell you that Intel has based on the new design to advertise its CPUs aggressively with a specified power in the range of 6 to 15 watts. Many means have been taken advantages by Intel to come up with the low level of power consumption, from optimized manufacturing process to the introduction of additional power-saving states which might be able to deactivate the specified CPU unit even while the system is operating.

However, there are fewer innovations in terms of enhancing performance. The majority of Haswell inherit from Ivy Bridge. For the basic CPU architecture, it seems to have no change, and the execution pipeline’s length still remains unchanged as before (14-19 stages)

The fourth-generation Core microarchitecture enhancements list

The fourth-generation Core microarchitecture enhancements list

The important enhancement in the x86 core design is the stage of implementing microinstruction. Currently, new execution devices and two new execution ports have been introduced, which have additional sub-units for processing integer instruction, branches and addresses. The improved parallelism feature have helped solving two problems. First, there are already four integer ALUs in the CPU, so the classic code can be executed at its decoding rate. Secondly, for floating point and FMA instructions, the microarchitecture is better suited without interfering into any normal code and even can be able to make Hyper-threading more efficient.

The second group among the positive enhancements in Haswell microarchitecture is the cache memory subsystem. The L1 and L2 caches’ bandwidth has been doubled while the latency is kept unchanged. The L1 cache can process two 32-byte reads and one 32-byte write per clock cycle while with one clock cycle, the L2 cache can receive and issue 64 bytes of data.

Moreover, Haswell-based CPU supports the AVX2/FMA3 instruction sets which can be used to expand the current SIMD sets by introducing the 256-bit instruction to solve the integer vectors, full-width element permutes, gather and floating-point fused multiply-add operations (in which consists of both multiplication and addition simultaneously). High-performance computing, gaming computations, video and audio processing, etc, can use the AVX2/FMA3 instructions to ensure higher speed of popular algorithms.

4th Gen Intel Core new compute instructions

4th Gen Intel Core new compute instructions

Some other smaller innovations are also worth being mentioned. The Haswell is typical with the improved branch prediction, a larger out-of-order execution buffer and a larger L2 TLB.

 

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