Ivy Bridge CPUs will have single threaded performance on par with the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and will mainly deliver improvements to power consumption and integrated graphics - nothing for PC enthusiasts to get excited about.
Intel have now revealed official performance figures for IB and they look rather good. They've produced a raft of benchmarks, which reveal improvements such as 56% in ArcSoft Media Expresso, 25% in Excel 2010 and a 199% gain in the 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark. Unfortunately, they haven't released any benchmarks based on high performance 3D games, but it's probably safe to say that they will be similarly improved. Now, on to the benchmarks, which compare their new 3.4 GHz i7-3770 (4 cores + HT) with the current 3.4 GHz i7-2600, also with 4 cores + HT:
The key architectural enhancements delivering these improvements are:
Ivy Bridge will feature PCI Express 3.0 x16 interconnection as well as PCIe 2.0 x4 controller. In fourth, the processor will support a number of power management innovations. The CPU is made using 22nm process technology.
Intel will release its code-named Ivy Bridge central processing units for desktops in March or April, 2012.