Intel’s Ivy Bridged delayed until April 2012 while some get an early sneak peek at the performances

Originally announced for a Q1 2012 release, Intel’s 22nm Ivy Bridge has been delayed until April 2012. As for the rest of lineup, we’re looking at sometime in Q3 2012.

According to CPU-World, Intel’s official launch event planned for April 2012 will include Core i5 and Core i7 desktop chips as well as Core i7 mobile ones.

For the rest of lineup, we’ll see the desktop Core i3 and mobile Core i5 chips during the second quarter, as for the Pentium, we’ll see them later in Q3 2012.

While Intel made some (bold) promises about the performance of Ivy Bridge including full DirectX 11 support, more EUs in the on-die GPU and up to 60% better performance compared to Sandy Bridge, the Chinese website Coolaler has actually gotten around to get a sneak peek at the performanceof the upcoming Ivy Bridge.

The screenshot seen below displays CPU-Z as well as Task Manager readouts (no HyperThreading) while AIDA64 Cache & Memory has had a go at it. The CPU used is a 2GHz sample, while CPU-Z report 2.4GHz turbo boost speed on a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard.

As we can see, similar speeds as the current Sandy Bridge with the difference of Ivy Bridge featuring an enhanced northbridge  and graphics core. On the other hand AIDA64 shows score slightly lower than the Sandy Bridge equivalent, but that is most likely due to the fact that the CPU is yet unsupported and unoptimized with a BIOS not made for this particular CPU and the benchmark software not programmed to measure the true potential.

Another thing to note is the memory speeds running at a high 2134MHz with 6-9-6-24 CR2, which does nothing but support the lack of optimization since these timings should provide better performances than what can be seen.

That certainly leaves some of us thinking whether to wait for Ivy Bridge or go for Sandy Bridge now, which in the end varies on many levels, one of which can also be user preferences.

Basically, if the change is needed, got to Sandy Bridge, especially with Intel’s latest flagship, the 2700K, out now, while the 2500K is also here offering great performances for a lower price. Gaming shouldn’t be any problem on any of the 2500/2600/2700 series, so no worries there.

If the change is not urgent, then why not considering the wait? Performances seen here may not be definitive, and after all, Ivy Bridge was never intended for raw power, but more energy efficiency, which then brings the overclockability into play. By being more power efficient, overclock head room may certainly become a lot higher, allowing for real improvements to be gained over Sandy Bridge.

So in the end, we see some promising results that may turn out good, but could also turn bad, all there is to do is wait for the real deal.

Source 1; Source 2