Core i5 3570K processor review - Introduction

Intel Core i5 3570K revisited - overclocked and charted

It was merely less then a year ago Intel Ivy bridge processors had been released. Over time one of the more popular processors of the entire series has become the Core i5 3750K processor, it's powerful, way more affordable then a 3770K and overclockable to a certain extend if you know what you need to deal with.

Many moons ago we have shared performance of this processor with you already, but over time benchmarks have been updated repositioning the processor a tiny bit. Next to that we never gave the processor an actual stand-alone review and as such we never have been able to overclock it, hence to the quick reference reviews where we get processor samples for merely a few days.

Now we know a lot of people have a hard time overclocking these processors even over 4300 MHz, so as such these are all good reasons to retest this processor we say. So today a standalone review on the Ivy bridge architecture based Core i5 3570K where we'll learn you how to take it towards 4700 MHz as well. What is Ivy bridge ? Let me put it very simply, you take say a Sandy Bridge Core i7 2600/2700K processor, apply it to a smaller fabrication node (22nm), increase the Turbo a little, increase the graphics performance a little and bam... that's a Core i7 3770K processor. Performance wise Ivy Bridge series never did stun and shock like the Sandy Bridge series did once they where introduced. In fact clock for clock it is all roughly the very same, with a +0.8% performance offset in favor of Ivy Bridge.

However -- with Ivy Bridge comes fairly nice overclockability, the platform comes with native USB 3.0, we got PCIe Gen 3 for the fastest graphics cards and overall just is a really fast processor series. Ever since Sandy Bridge there has been another massive change inside the processor, integrated graphics processor cores working in symbiosis with the CPU, even sharing cache, embedded and harbored inside the processor. It all started with the Core i5 650, 660 and 661 processors but these CPUs had two little small chips on the processor die, literally. And that has changed as both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge have embedded IGPs. For Ivy Bridge the IGP has certainly gotten a good chunk faster, as they must compete with AMD's really excellent implementation. Next to that, the IGP is now DirectX 11 compatible as well.

Today of course we'll be reviewing Intel's Core i5 3570K processor. Why K versions you ask? Well, the default Ivy Bridge processors are much harder to overclock. With past-gen processors you pretty much took your base clock of 133 MHz and apply say a default multiplier of 25, that would be your 3.33 GHz processor. That base clock was capable of going so much higher, 150, 186 and when tweaked right, even over 200 MHz. The new technology however has an embedded GPU / video processor merged into the very same processor die running over the same bus sharing the same L3 cache memory, things get increasingly complicated in matters of tweaking. The 100 MHz baseclock of Ivy Bridge processors therefore is harder to tweak. And that is why Intel introduced the K series, it will offer you an unlocked multiplier which will allow you to go much, much higher.

All today's test benchmarks will carry overclocked test results with the 3570K processor running at a stable 4700 MHz. 

Have a peek at what will be tested, and then let's head onwards to the next page.