Review: Intel 4770k processor and Z87 chipset

Conclusion

So we have put the 4770k through its paces and gotten the synthetic numbers from our benches and real world numbers from the others. What exactly does Haswell bring to the table and is it worth the effort in upgrading. That is the point of the review so let’s break the conclusion down into a few parts, the Z87 chipset and then IGP which is the HD 4600 and then of course the CPU itself, but first we are going to talk about the issues that raised during are testing.

Issues

The first is temperature of the 4770k. While at stock settings you won’t run into any issues as long as you have a somewhat decent cooler for your 4770k, the real problem is overclocking as once you start pushing the volts at all, you will begin to see a massive heat increase, even more so then what we saw on Ivy Bridge. Basically you will need a decent cooler and there is only a few out there to keep your temps acceptable if you plan to overclock without going with a custom water cooling loop.

The other issue we ran into was with the Corsair 860i PSU and to be honest it’s the same issue with all digital power supplies from Corsair. These power supplies for some reason are on the compatibility list when in fact the just don’t work with Haswell and the Z87 chipset. The Intel board showed a catastrophic power event with the 860i and would shut-down three times when booting before finally booting fully. We even replaced the PSU with another 860i but it had the same results.Also the Gigabyte motherboard used in testing would cause the PSU to trip out when the psu was simply turned on. We aren’t sure what the issue is but it is only with the Corsair digital series PSU’s and we simply moved to a corsair AX1200 and there were no issues. This is just a warning to those who plan to upgrade to Haswell that the digital series PSU’s from Corsair are NOT compatible, or at least not with the Intel Dz87KLT-75k and the Gigabyte Z87-X OC.

Z87 Chipset

A lot of the features we would normally see coming from the Chipset are now being relocated to the CPU itself and that leaves other controllers for Intel to play around with and upgrade, they have done exactly that. We now have up to 6 x USB 3.0, 6 x SATA 6gb/s ports and finally up to 8 x PCI express 2.0. The new features all come from the same thing which is dubbed Flex IO. This gives the third party motherboard manufactures a choice in what to offer in motherboard design. While the use of third party controllers can add to any one lacking component, they can choose to increase or decrease the numbers of USB 3.0 or SATA 6gb/s ports to better market each motherboard. This was normally a static layout with previous chipsets, but now we have a more dynamic approach and that should make for better motherboard going forward.

HD 4600

The integrated GPU the 4770k isn’t the best that Intel has to offer in terms of performance, the HD 5000 IGP that of course offers higher performance is being utilized in ultrabooks and rightly so. over 90-percent of desktop users will of course being running a dedicated graphics card and there will only be a small number of people that would have any use for the extra performance the HD 5000 has over the HD 4600. That being said, the 4770k graphics doesn’t perform badly and in fact offers nearly 30-percent increased performance over Ivy Bridge and that was more than evident in the bench marks.

Not forgetting a lot of HTPC fans out there who love putting together a high performance computer for the media prowess will have no issues with the revised integrated graphics processor which brings enhanced support for 4K displays, improved Intel Quick Sync Video and more. While it will never perform as good as a decent dedicated graphics card, we believe the point isn’t to compete but to offer a solution to those who don’t need the best graphics performance.

The 4770k

The CPU itself offers a decent performance lift compared to previous generation but the real element for its design isn’t just the extra performance which in some cases were truly extensive, the real light must be shined on the overall efficiency that the entire chip has to offer. Intel have really shed some watts off, the entire test system at idle was using less than 50 watts and while that is without a graphics card, one must be impressed by those numbers. Even at load the watts stayed under 120 and considering we have higher performance than Ivy bridge, that is simply astonishing.

Overall we are more than pleased with the 4770k, it offers a decent performance increases in CPU power and a more substantial increase in IGP area and since we are in the tick of Intel’s tick tock cycle, that is really all we expected, but the real bonus is the mind blowing power efficiency that the 4th generation has to offer and we really mean mind blowing. We have to say it again, the idle watts on the entire system were below 50, and that is efficient.

So finally we are asked is the 4th gen worth it, that really all depends on what you have at the moment, if you are running Sandy bridge, than it would easily warrant the upgrade, but if you are currently rocking Ivy Bridge, than having to upgrade your motherboard for the power efficiency alone isn’t rather efficient and with that pun we leave you with the award for the 4770k and it’s of course a shiny gold award as regardless of what you have at the moment, the 4770k is a beast and there is no other way about it.