1st generation intel core i7 processor. Five generations of Core i7: from Sandy Bridge to Skylake

INTRODUCTION This summer, Intel did a strange thing: it managed to replace two whole generations of processors focused on mainstream personal computers. At first, Haswell was replaced by processors with the Broadwell microarchitecture, but then within just a couple of months they lost their status as a novelty and gave way to Skylake processors, which will remain the most progressive CPUs for at least another year and a half. This leapfrog with a change of generations occurred mainly due to problems Intel, which arose when introducing a new 14-nm technical process, which is used in the production of both Broadwell and Skylake. Productive carriers of the Broadwell microarchitecture on their way to desktop systems were greatly delayed, and their followers came out according to a pre-planned schedule, which led to the crumpled announcement of the fifth generation Core processors and a serious reduction in their life cycle. As a result of all these perturbations, in the desktop segment Broadwell have occupied a very narrow niche of economical processors with a powerful graphics core and are now content with only a small level of sales inherent in highly specialized products. The attention of the advanced part of the users turned to the followers of Broadwell - the Skylake processors.

It should be noted that over the past few years, Intel has not at all please its fans with the performance increase of the offered products. Each new generation of processors adds only a few percent to the specific speed, which ultimately leads to a lack of explicit incentives for users to upgrade old systems. But the release of Skylake - a generation of CPUs that Intel actually jumped a notch on the way to - inspired some hope that we would get a really worthwhile update to the most common computing platform. However, nothing of the kind happened: Intel performed in its usual repertoire. Broadwell was presented to the public as a kind of offshoot from the main line of desktop processors, and Skylake was only slightly faster than Haswell in most applications.

Therefore, despite all expectations, the appearance of Skylake on sale caused skepticism among many. After reviewing the results of real-life tests, many buyers simply did not see the real point in switching to sixth-generation Core processors. Indeed, the main trump card of fresh CPUs is primarily a new platform with accelerated internal interfaces, but not a new processor microarchitecture. And this means that Skylake offers few real incentives to update based systems of past generations.

However, we still would not dissuade all users without exception from switching to Skylake. The fact is that although Intel is increasing the performance of its processors at a very restrained pace, since the advent of Sandy Bridge, which still work in many systems, four generations of microarchitecture have already changed. Each step along the path of progress has contributed to an increase in productivity, and by now Skylake is able to offer quite significant performance gains over its earlier predecessors. Only to see this, it is necessary to compare it not with Haswell, but with the earlier representatives of the Core family that appeared before it.

Actually, this is exactly the kind of comparison we are going to do today. With all that said, we decided to see how much the performance of Core i7 processors has grown since 2011, and collected in a single test the older Core i7s belonging to the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake generations. Having received the results of such testing, we will try to understand which processors' owners should start upgrading old systems, and which of them can wait until the next generations of CPUs appear. Along the way, we will look at the performance level of the new Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K processors of the Broadwell and Skylake generations, which have not yet been tested in our laboratory.

Comparative characteristics of the tested CPUs

From Sandy Bridge to Skylake: Specific Performance Comparison

In order to remember how the specific performance of Intel processors has changed over the last five years, we decided to start with a simple test in which we compared the speed of Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake brought to the same frequency 4 , 0 GHz. In this comparison, we used Core i7 processors, that is, quad-core processors with Hyper-Threading technology.

The SYSmark 2014 1.5 complex test was taken as the main test tool, which is good because it reproduces typical user activity in common office applications, when creating and processing multimedia content, and when solving computational problems. The following graphs show the results obtained. For ease of perception, they are normalized, the performance of Sandy Bridge is taken as 100 percent.

The SYSmark 2014 1.5 integral indicator allows making the following observations. Moving from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge increased specific productivity only marginally - by about 3-4 percent. The next step towards Haswell turned out to be much more productive, resulting in a 12 percent improvement in performance. And this is the maximum gain that can be observed in the given graph. After all, further Broadwell overtakes Haswell by only 7 percent, and the transition from Broadwell to Skylake does increase the specific productivity by only 1-2 percent. All the progress from Sandy Bridge to Skylake translates into a 26% increase in performance with constant clock speeds.

A more detailed interpretation of the obtained SYSmark 2014 1.5 indicators can be viewed on the following three graphs, where the integral performance index is decomposed into components by application type.

Pay attention, most noticeably with the introduction of new versions of microarchitectures, multimedia applications add to the speed of execution. In these, the Skylake microarchitecture outperforms Sandy Bridge by a whopping 33 percent. But in calculating tasks, on the contrary, progress is manifested least of all. Moreover, at such a load, the step from Broadwell to Skylake even turns into a slight decrease in specific performance.

Now that we have an idea of ​​what has happened to the specific performance of Intel processors over the past few years, let's try to figure out what caused the observed changes.

From Sandy Bridge to Skylake: What Has Changed in Intel Processors

We decided to make a representative of the Sandy Bridge generation a reference point in comparing different Core i7s for a reason. It was this design that laid a solid foundation for all further improvement of productive Intel processors up to today's Skylake. Thus, representatives of the Sandy Bridge family became the first highly integrated CPUs in which both computing and graphics cores, as well as a north bridge with an L3 cache and a memory controller, were collected in a single semiconductor crystal. In addition, for the first time, they began to use an internal ring bus, through which the problem of highly efficient interaction of all structural units that make up such a complex processor was solved. All subsequent CPU generations continue to follow these universal principles of construction, embedded in the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, without any serious adjustments.

The internal microarchitecture of computing cores has undergone significant changes in Sandy Bridge. It not only brought support for the new AES-NI and AVX instruction sets, but also found numerous major improvements in the depths of the executive pipeline. It was in Sandy Bridge that a separate level zero cache was added for decoded instructions; a completely new command reordering block has appeared, based on the use of a physical register file; branch prediction algorithms have been noticeably improved; and in addition, two of the three execution ports for working with data have become unified. Such heterogeneous reforms, carried out at once at all stages of the pipeline, allowed to significantly increase the specific performance of Sandy Bridge, which, in comparison with the previous generation Nehalem processors, immediately increased by almost 15 percent. Added to this is a 15% increase in nominal clock speeds and excellent overclocking potential, resulting in a family of processors that Intel still cites as an exemplary embodiment of the "so" phase in the company's pendulum design concept.

Indeed, we have not seen such improvements in microarchitecture after Sandy Bridge in terms of mass scale and efficiency. All subsequent generations of processor designs have made much smaller improvements in computing cores. Perhaps this is a reflection of the lack of real competition in the processor market, perhaps the reason for the slowdown in progress lies in Intel's desire to focus on improving the graphics cores, or maybe Sandy Bridge just turned out to be such a successful project that its further development requires too much labor.

The transition from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge illustrates the recent decline in innovation intensity. Despite the fact that the next generation of processors after Sandy Bridge was transferred to a new production technology with 22nm norms, its clock frequencies did not increase at all. The improvements made in the design mainly concerned the more flexible memory controller and the PCI Express bus controller, which received compatibility with the third version of this standard. As for the microarchitecture of computational cores itself, some cosmetic alterations made it possible to accelerate the execution of division operations and slightly increase the efficiency of Hyper-Threading technology, and that's all. As a result, the growth in specific productivity was no more than 5 percent.

At the same time, the introduction of Ivy Bridge brought something that the overclocking army of millions now bitterly regrets. Starting with processors of this generation, Intel refused to interface the semiconductor chip of the CPU and the lid covering it by means of flux-free soldering and switched to filling the space between them with a polymer thermal interface material with very dubious heat-conducting properties. This artificially worsened the frequency potential and made the Ivy Bridge processors, like all their successors, noticeably less overclocked compared to Sandy Bridge, which is very vigorous in this regard.

However, Ivy Bridge is just a "tick", and therefore no one promised any special breakthroughs in these processors. However, the next generation, Haswell, which, unlike Ivy Bridge, is already in the "so" phase, did not bring any encouraging performance gains either. And this is actually a little strange, since a lot of various improvements in the Haswell microarchitecture have been made, and they are scattered across different parts of the execution pipeline, which, in total, could well increase the overall pace of command execution.

For example, in the input part of the pipeline, the performance of branch prediction was improved, and the queue of decoded instructions was dynamically divided between parallel threads coexisting within the Hyper-Threading technology. Along the way, there was an increase in the window of out-of-order execution of commands, which in total should have raised the share of code executed in parallel by the processor. Directly in the execution unit, two additional functional ports were added, aimed at processing integer instructions, servicing branches and saving data. Thanks to this, Haswell is able to process up to eight micro-ops per clock - a third more than its predecessors. Moreover, the new microarchitecture has doubled the bandwidth of the cache memory of the first and second levels.

Thus, improvements in the Haswell microarchitecture did not affect only the speed of the decoder, which seems to be the bottleneck in modern Core processors at the moment. Indeed, despite the impressive list of improvements, Haswell's performance gain compared to Ivy Bridge was only about 5-10 percent. But in fairness, it should be noted that the acceleration on vector operations is much stronger. And the greatest gain can be seen in applications using the new AVX2 and FMA commands, which support has also appeared in this microarchitecture.

The Haswell processors, like the Ivy Bridge, were not particularly popular with enthusiasts at first either. Especially considering the fact that they did not offer any increase in clock frequencies in the original version. However, a year after their debut, Haswell began to seem noticeably more attractive. First, there has been an increase in the number of applications that appeal to the strongest points of this architecture and use vector instructions. Secondly, Intel was able to fix the frequency situation. Later modifications of Haswell, which received their own codename Devil's Canyon, were able to increase the advantage over their predecessors thanks to the increase in clock frequency, which finally broke through the 4 GHz ceiling. Besides, following the lead of overclockers, Intel has improved the polymer thermal interface under the processor cover, which made Devil's Canyon more suitable objects for overclocking. Certainly not as malleable as Sandy Bridge, but nonetheless.

And with this baggage, Intel approached Broadwell. Since the main key feature of these processors was to be a new production technology with 14nm norms, no significant innovations in their microarchitecture were planned - it should have been almost the most commonplace "tick". Everything necessary for the success of new products could well be provided by only one thin technical process with second generation FinFET transistors, which in theory allows to reduce power consumption and raise frequencies. However, the practical implementation of the new technology turned into a series of failures, as a result of which Broadwell got only economy, but not high frequencies. As a result, those processors of this generation, which Intel introduced for desktop systems, came out more like mobile CPUs than the successors of the Devil's Canyon cause. Moreover, in addition to reduced thermal packets and reduced frequencies, they differ from their predecessors and have a smaller L3 cache, which, however, is somewhat compensated by the appearance of a fourth level cache located on a separate crystal.

At the same frequency as Haswell, Broadwell processors demonstrate an approximately 7% advantage, provided both by the addition of an additional level of data caching, and by another improvement in the branch prediction algorithm along with an increase in the main internal buffers. In addition, Broadwell introduces new and faster execution schemes for multiply and divide instructions. However, all these small improvements are canceled out by a fiasco with clock speeds dating back to the era before Sandy Bridge. So, for example, the senior overclocking Core i7-5775C of the Broadwell generation is inferior in frequency to the Core i7-4790K by as much as 700 MHz. It is clear that it is pointless to expect any kind of productivity growth against this background, if only it would do without a serious drop.

Largely because of this, Broadwell turned out to be unattractive for the bulk of users. Yes, the processors of this family are highly economical and even fit into a thermal package with a 65-watt frame, but who, by and large, cares about this? The overclocking potential of the first generation 14nm CPU turned out to be rather restrained. We are not talking about any work at frequencies approaching the 5 GHz bar. The maximum that can be achieved from Broadwell when using air cooling lies in the vicinity of 4.2 GHz. In other words, the fifth generation Core came out from Intel, at least weird. What, by the way, the microprocessor giant ultimately regretted: Intel representatives note that the late release of Broadwell for desktop computers, its shortened life cycle and atypical characteristics negatively affected the level of sales, and the company does not plan to start such experiments anymore.

The newest Skylake against this background is not so much a further development of Intel's microarchitecture as a kind of work on errors. Despite the fact that the production of this generation of CPUs uses the same 14nm process technology as in the case of Broadwell, Skylake has no problems with working at high frequencies. The nominal frequencies of the sixth generation Core processors returned to those indicators that were characteristic of their 22nm predecessors, and the overclocking potential even increased slightly. Overclockers have played into the hands of the fact that in Skylake the processor power converter has again migrated to the motherboard and thereby reduced the total heat dissipation of the CPU during overclocking. It's a pity that Intel hasn't returned to using an efficient thermal interface between the die and the processor cover.

But as for the basic microarchitecture of computing cores, despite the fact that Skylake, like Haswell, is the embodiment of the "so" phase, there are very few innovations in it. Moreover, most of them are aimed at expanding the input part of the executive conveyor, while the rest of the conveyor remained without any significant changes. The changes relate to improving the performance of branch prediction and increasing the efficiency of the prefetcher, and nothing else. At the same time, some of the optimizations serve not so much to improve performance as to improve energy efficiency again. Therefore, one should not be surprised that Skylake hardly differs from Broadwell in its specific performance.

However, there are exceptions: in some cases, Skylake can surpass its predecessors in performance and more noticeably. The fact is that the memory subsystem has been improved in this microarchitecture. The on-chip ring bus got faster, and this ultimately increased the bandwidth of the L3 cache. Plus, the memory controller received support for high-frequency DDR4 SDRAM memory.

But in the end, nevertheless, it turns out, no matter what Intel says about the progressiveness of Skylake, from the point of view of ordinary users this is a rather weak update. The main improvements in Skylake are in the graphics core and in energy efficiency, which opens the way for such CPUs to fanless tablet form factor systems. Desktop representatives of this generation do not differ too much from Haswell. Even if we close our eyes to the existence of the intermediate generation Broadwell, and compare Skylake directly with Haswell, the observed increase in specific productivity will be about 7-8 percent, which can hardly be called an impressive manifestation of technological progress.

Along the way, it is worth noting that the improvement of technological production processes does not meet expectations. From Sandy Bridge to Skylake, Intel changed two semiconductor technologies and more than halved the thickness of the transistor gates. However, the modern 14nm technical process, compared to the 32nm technology of five years ago, did not allow increasing the operating frequencies of the processors. All Core processors of the last five generations have very similar clock speeds, which, if they exceed the 4 GHz mark, are quite insignificant.

For a clear illustration of this fact, you can look at the following graph, which displays the clock speed of older overclocking Core i7 processors of different generations.

Moreover, the clock speed does not even peak at Skylake. Haswell processors belonging to the Devil's Canyon subgroup can boast of the maximum frequency. Their nominal frequency is 4.0 GHz, but thanks to the turbo mode, in real conditions, they are able to accelerate to 4.4 GHz. For modern Skylakes, the maximum frequency is only 4.2 GHz.

All this, naturally, affects the final performance of real representatives of various CPU families. And then we propose to see how all this affects the performance of platforms built on the flagship processors of each of the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake families.

How we tested

Five different generations of Core i7 processors took part in the comparison: Core i7-2700K, Core i7-3770K, Core i7-4790K, Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K. Therefore, the list of components involved in testing turned out to be quite extensive:

Processors:

Intel Core i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.4-3.8 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.5-3.9 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-4790K (Haswell Refresh, 4 cores + HT, 4.0-4.4 GHz, 8 MB L3);
Intel Core i7-5775C (Broadwell, 4 cores, 3.3-3.7 GHz, 6 MB L3, 128 MB L4).
Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake, 4 cores, 4.0-4.2 GHz, 8 MB L3).

CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S.
Motherboards:

ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming (LGA 1151, Intel Z170);
ASUS Z97-Pro (LGA 1150, Intel Z97);
ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe (LGA1155, Intel Z77).

Memory:

2x8 GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, 9-11-11-31 (G.Skill F3-2133C9D-16GTX);
2x8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM, 15-15-15-35 (Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2A2666C16R).

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB / 384-bit GDDR5, 1000-1076 / 7010 MHz).
Disk subsystem: Kingston HyperX Savage 480 GB (SHSS37A / 480G).
PSU: Corsair RM850i ​​(80 Plus Gold, 850W).

Testing was performed on Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise Build 10240 using the following set of drivers:

Intel Chipset Driver 10.1.1.8;
Intel Management Engine Interface Driver 11.0.0.1157;
NVIDIA GeForce 358.50 Driver.

Performance

Overall performance

To assess the performance of processors in common tasks, we traditionally use the Bapco SYSmark test suite, which simulates the user's work in real common modern office programs and applications for creating and processing digital content. The idea of ​​the test is very simple: it produces a single metric that characterizes the weighted average speed of a computer during everyday use. After the release of the Windows 10 operating system, this benchmark was once again updated, and now we use the latest version - SYSmark 2014 1.5.

When comparing Core i7 of different generations, when they operate in their nominal modes, the results are not at all the same as when comparing at a single clock frequency. Still, the real frequency and features of the turbo mode have a significant impact on performance. For example, according to the data obtained, the Core i7-6700K is faster than the Core i7-5775C by as much as 11 percent, but its advantage over the Core i7-4790K is quite insignificant - it is only about 3 percent. At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the newest Skylake turns out to be significantly faster than the processors of the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generations. Its advantage over the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K reaches 33 and 28 percent, respectively.

A deeper understanding of the SYSmark 2014 1.5 results can provide insight into the performance scores obtained in various system use cases. The Office Productivity script simulates typical office work: preparing word, processing spreadsheets, working with e-mail, and surfing the Internet. The script uses the following set of applications: Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, Google Chrome 32, Microsoft Excel 2013, Microsoft OneNote 2013, Microsoft Outlook 2013, Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, Microsoft Word 2013, WinZip Pro 17.5 Pro.

The Media Creation scenario simulates the creation of a commercial using pre-shot digital images and video. The popular packages Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and Trimble SketchUp Pro 2013 are used for this purpose.

The Data / Financial Analysis scenario is devoted to statistical analysis and investment forecasting based on a certain financial model. The scenario uses large amounts of numerical data and two applications Microsoft Excel 2013 and WinZip Pro 17.5 Pro.

The results obtained by us under various load scenarios are qualitatively similar to the general indicators of SYSmark 2014 1.5. Noteworthy is the fact that the Core i7-4790K processor does not look outdated at all. It is noticeably inferior to the newest Core i7-6700K only in the Data / Financial Analysis calculation scenario, and in other cases it is either inferior to its successor by a completely inconspicuous amount, or generally turns out to be faster. For example, a member of the Haswell family is ahead of the new Skylake in office applications. But older processors like the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K seem to be somewhat outdated offerings. They lose to the new product in different types of tasks from 25 to 40 percent, and this, perhaps, is a sufficient reason for the Core i7-6700K to be considered a worthy replacement for them.

Gaming performance

As you know, the performance of platforms equipped with high-performance processors in the vast majority of modern games is determined by the power of the graphics subsystem. That is why, when testing processors, we select the most processor-dependent games, and we measure the number of frames twice. In the first pass, tests are carried out without enabling anti-aliasing and with setting far from the highest resolutions. Such settings allow us to assess how well processors perform with a gaming load in principle, which means they allow us to make guesses about how the tested computing platforms will behave in the future, when faster options for graphics accelerators appear on the market. The second pass is performed with realistic settings - when choosing FullHD-resolution and the maximum level of full-screen anti-aliasing. In our opinion, such results are no less interesting, since they answer the frequently asked question about what level of gaming performance processors can provide right now - in modern conditions.

However, in this testing we put together a powerful graphics subsystem based on the flagship NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card. And as a result, in some games, the frame rate showed a dependence on processor performance, even in FullHD resolution.

FullHD results with maximum quality settings

Typically, the impact of processors on gaming performance, especially when it comes to powerful representatives of the Core i7 series, is negligible. However, when comparing five Core i7s from different generations, the results are not at all uniform. Even when set to the maximum graphics quality settings, the Core i7-6700K and Core i7-5775C demonstrate the highest gaming performance, while the older Core i7s lag behind. So, the frame rate obtained in a system with a Core i7-6700K exceeds the performance of a system based on a Core i7-4770K by a subtle one percent, but the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K processors seem to be a noticeably worse basis for a gaming system. Moving from a Core i7-2700K or Core i7-3770K to the latest Core i7-6700K gives a 5-7 percent increase in fps, which can have a very noticeable impact on the quality of the gaming process.

You can see all this much more clearly if you look at the gaming performance of processors with reduced image quality, when the frame rate is not limited by the power of the graphics subsystem.

Results at reduced resolution

The latest Core i7-6700K processor once again manages to show the highest performance among all the latest generations of Core i7. Its superiority over the Core i7-5775C is about 5 percent, and over the Core i7-4690K - about 10 percent. There is nothing strange in this: games are quite sensitive to the speed of the memory subsystem, and it is in this direction that serious improvements have been made in Skylake. But the superiority of the Core i7-6700K over the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K is much more noticeable. Senior Sandy Bridge lags behind the new product by 30-35 percent, and Ivy Bridge loses to it in the region of 20-30 percent. In other words, no matter how much Intel was criticized for improving its own processors too slowly, the company was able to increase the speed of its CPUs by a third over the past five years, and this is a very tangible result.

Testing in real games is completed by the results of the popular synthetic benchmark Futuremark 3DMark.

They echo the gaming performance and those results that are given by Futuremark 3DMark. With the transfer of the microarchitecture of the Core i7 processors from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, the 3DMark scores increased by 2 to 7 percent. The introduction of Haswell's design and the release of Devil's Canyon processors added an additional 7-14 percent to the performance of older Core i7s. However, then the appearance of the Core i7-5775C, which has a relatively low clock frequency, somewhat rolled back the performance. And the newest Core i7-6700K, in fact, had to take the rap for two generations of microarchitecture. The increase in the final 3DMark rating for the new processor of the Skylake family in comparison with the Core i7-4790K was up to 7 percent. And in fact, this is not so much: after all, the most noticeable performance improvement over the past five years has been brought by Haswell processors. The latest generations of desktop processors are, indeed, somewhat disappointing.

In-app tests

In Autodesk 3ds max 2016 we are testing the final rendering speed. This measures the time it takes to render at 1920x1080 using the mental ray renderer for one frame of a standard Hummer scene.

Another test of the final rendering is carried out by us using the popular free 3D graphics package Blender 2.75a. In it we measure the duration of building the final model from Blender Cycles Benchmark rev4.

We used the Cinebench R15 benchmark to measure the speed of photorealistic 3D rendering. Maxon recently updated its benchmark, and now it again allows you to evaluate the performance of various platforms when rendering in the latest versions of the animation package Cinema 4D.

We measure the performance of websites and web applications built with modern technologies using the new Microsoft Edge 20.10240.16384.0 browser. For this, a specialized test WebXPRT 2015 is used, which implements algorithms that are actually used in Internet applications in HTML5 and JavaScript.

Performance testing for graphics processing takes place in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015. The average execution time of the test script, which is a creatively reworked Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed ​​Test, which includes typical processing of four 24-megapixel images captured by a digital camera, is measured.

At the numerous requests of amateur photographers, we have conducted performance testing in the graphics program Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.1. The test scenario includes post-processing and export to JPEG with a resolution of 1920x1080 and a maximum quality of two hundred 12MP RAW images taken with a Nikon D300 digital camera.

Non-linear video editing performance is tested in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015. This measures the rendering time to H.264 of a Blu-Ray project containing HDV 1080p25 footage with various effects overlay.

To measure the speed of processors when compressing information, we use the WinRAR 5.3 archiver, with which we archive a folder with various files with a total volume of 1.7 GB with the maximum compression ratio.

To evaluate the speed of video transcoding into H.264 format, the x264 FHD Benchmark 1.0.1 (64bit) test is used, based on measuring the encoding time by the x264 encoder of the source video into MPEG-4 / AVC format with a resolution [email protected] and default settings. It should be noted that the results of this benchmark are of great practical importance, since the x264 encoder is at the heart of numerous popular transcoding utilities, for example, HandBrake, MeGUI, VirtualDub, etc. We periodically update the encoder used for performance measurements, and version r2538 took part in this testing, which implements support for all modern instruction sets, including AVX2.

In addition, we have added to the list of test applications a new x265 encoder designed for transcoding video into the promising H.265 / HEVC format, which is a logical continuation of H.264 and is characterized by more efficient compression algorithms. To evaluate performance, the original [email protected] Y4M video file that is transcoded to H.265 with medium profile. The release of the coder version 1.7 took part in this testing.

The advantage of the Core i7-6700K over its earlier predecessors in various applications is beyond question. However, two types of tasks have benefited most from the evolution that has taken place. Firstly, related to the processing of multimedia content, be it video or images. Secondly, the final rendering in 3D modeling and design packages. In general, in such cases, the Core i7-6700K outperforms the Core i7-2700K by no less than 40-50 percent. And sometimes a much more dramatic improvement in speed can be seen. So, when transcoding video with the x265 codec, the newest Core i7-6700K produces exactly twice the performance than the old Core i7-2700K.

If we talk about the increase in the speed of execution of resource-intensive tasks that the Core i7-6700K can provide in comparison with the Core i7-4790K, then here it is impossible to bring such impressive illustrations to the results of the work of Intel engineers. The maximum advantage of the novelty is observed in Lightroom, here Skylake is one and a half times better. But this is rather an exception to the rule. In most multimedia tasks, the Core i7-6700K offers only a 10% improvement in performance over the Core i7-4790K. And with a load of a different nature, the difference in performance is even less or even absent.

Separately, a few words must be said about the result shown by the Core i7-5775C. Due to its low clock speed, this processor is slower than the Core i7-4790K and Core i7-6700K. But do not forget that its key characteristic is economy. And it is quite capable of becoming one of the best options in terms of specific performance per watt of electricity consumed. We will easily verify this in the next section.

Energy consumption

Skylake processors are manufactured using a modern 14nm process technology with second-generation 3D transistors, however, despite this, their thermal package has increased to 91 watts. In other words, the new CPUs are not only "hotter" than 65-watt Broadwells, but also surpass Haswell's calculated heat dissipation, manufactured using 22-nm technology and getting along within the 88-watt thermal package. The reason, obviously, is that initially the Skylake architecture was optimized not for high frequencies, but for energy efficiency and the possibility of using it in mobile devices. Therefore, in order for the desktop Skylake to get acceptable clock frequencies lying in the vicinity of the 4 GHz mark, the supply voltage had to be raised, which inevitably affected power consumption and heat dissipation.

However, Broadwell processors did not differ in low operating voltages either, so there is a hope that the 91-watt Skylake thermal package was received for some formal reason and, in fact, they will not be more voracious than their predecessors. Check it out!

The new Corsair RM850i ​​digital power supply we used in the test system allows us to monitor the consumed and output electrical power, which we use for measurements. The following graph shows the total system consumption (without monitor) measured "after" the power supply, which is the sum of the power consumption of all components involved in the system. The efficiency of the power supply itself is not taken into account in this case. We have activated turbo mode and all available energy-saving technologies to correctly estimate energy consumption.

At idle, a quantum leap in the economy of desktop platforms came with the release of Broadwell. The Core i7-5775C and Core i7-6700K have noticeably lower idle consumption.

But under load in the form of video transcoding, the most economical CPU options are Core i7-5775C and Core i7-3770K. The newest Core i7-6700K consumes more. His energetic appetites are on par with the senior Sandy Bridge. True, the new product, unlike Sandy Bridge, has support for AVX2 instructions, which require quite serious energy costs.

The following diagram shows the maximum load under load created by the 64-bit version of LinX 0.6.5 with support for the AVX2 instruction set, which is based on the Linpack package, which has an exorbitant appetite for energy.

Once again, the Broadwell generation processor shows miracles in energy efficiency. However, if you look at how much electricity the Core i7-6700K consumes, it becomes clear that progress in microarchitectures has bypassed the energy efficiency of desktop CPUs. Yes, Skylake has introduced new offerings with an extremely tempting performance-to-power ratio in the mobile segment, but the latest desktop processors continue to consume roughly the same amount as their predecessors did in the five years prior.

conclusions

After testing the latest Core i7-6700K and comparing it with several generations of previous CPUs, we again come to the disappointing conclusion that Intel continues to follow its unspoken principles and is not too eager to increase the speed of desktop processors focused on high-performance systems. And if, in comparison with the older Broadwell, the new product offers about a 15% improvement in performance due to significantly better clock speeds, then in comparison with the older, but faster Haswell, it no longer seems as progressive. The difference in performance between Core i7-6700K and Core i7-4790K, despite the fact that these processors are shared by two generations of microarchitecture, does not exceed 5-10 percent. And this is very little for the senior desktop Skylake to be unambiguously recommended for updating existing LGA 1150 systems.

However, it would take a long time to get used to such insignificant steps by Intel in increasing the speed of processors for desktop systems. The increase in the performance of new solutions, which lies approximately within such limits, is a long-established tradition. Intel's desktop-centric CPUs have not revolutionized the computing performance for a very long time. And the reasons for this are quite understandable: the company's engineers are busy optimizing the developed microarchitectures for mobile applications and, first of all, think about energy efficiency. Intel's success in adapting its own architectures for use in thin and light devices is undeniable, but the adherents of classic desktops can only be content with small performance gains, which, fortunately, have not yet completely disappeared.

However, this does not mean at all that the Core i7-6700K can be recommended only for new systems. Owners of configurations based on the LGA 1155 platform with processors of the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generations may well think about upgrading their computers. In comparison with the Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3770K, the new Core i7-6700K looks very good - its weighted average superiority over such predecessors is estimated at 30-40 percent. In addition, processors with the Skylake microarchitecture can boast of support for the AVX2 instruction set, which has now found widespread use in multimedia applications, and due to this, in some cases, the Core i7-6700K turns out to be much stronger faster. So, during video transcoding, we even saw cases when the Core i7-6700K was more than twice as fast as the Core i7-2700K!

Skylake processors also have a number of other advantages associated with the introduction of the accompanying new LGA 1151 platform. And the point is not so much in the support of DDR4 memory that has appeared in it, but in the fact that the new logic sets of the hundredth series have finally received really high-speed connection to the processor and support for a large number of PCI Express 3.0 lanes. As a result, the leading LGA 1151 systems boast numerous fast interfaces for connecting storage devices and external devices that are free of any artificial bandwidth limitations.

Plus, when assessing the prospects of the LGA 1151 platform and Skylake processors, one more point should be kept in mind. Intel will be in no rush to bring the next generation processors known as Kaby Lake to market. According to the available information, representatives of this series of processors in desktop versions will not appear on the market until 2017. So Skylake will be with us for a long time, and the system built on it will be able to remain relevant for a very long period of time.

However, these two materials, it seems to us, are still insufficient for a full disclosure of the topic. The first "subtle point" is clock frequencies - after all, with the release of Haswell Refresh, the company has already divided rigidly the line of "regular" Core i7 and "overclocking" ones, overclocking the latter by factory (which was not so difficult, since such processors generally require a little , so it is not difficult to select the required amount of the required crystals). The appearance of Skylake not only preserved the state of affairs, but also exacerbated it: Core i7-6700 and i7-6700K are generally very different processors, differing in TDP level. Thus, even at the same frequencies, these models could work differently in terms of performance, and the frequencies are not the same at all. In general, it is dangerous to draw conclusions according to the older model, but basically it was studied everywhere and only it. "Younger" (and more in demand) has not been spoiled by the attention of test laboratories until recently.

And what is it for? Just for comparison with the "tops" of the previous families, especially since there usually was not such a large spread of frequencies. Sometimes it didn’t exist at all - for example, the pairs 2600 / 2600K and 4771 / 4770K are identical in terms of the processor part in the normal mode. It is clear that the 6700 is more analogous to the unnamed models, but to the 2600S, 3770S, 4770S and 4790S, but ... This is important only from a technical point of view, which, in general, is of little interest to anyone. In terms of prevalence, ease of acquisition and other significant (as opposed to technical details) characteristics, this is just a "regular" family, which most owners of "old" Core i7 will be looking at. Or potential owners - while the upgrade is still something useful at times, the majority of users of processors of lower processor families, if it is necessary to increase performance, look first of all at devices for the platform already on hand, and only then consider (or do not consider) the idea its replacement. Whether this approach is correct or not, the tests will show.

Testbed configuration

CPU	Intel Core i7-2700K	Intel Core i7-3770	Intel Core i7-4770K	Intel Core i7-5775C	Intel Core i7-6700
Kernel name	Sandy bridge	Ivy bridge	Haswell	Broadwell	Skylake
Prospect technology	32 nm	22 nm	22 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Core frequency std / max, GHz	3,5/3,9	3,4/3,9	3,5/3,9	3,3/3,7	3,4/4,0
# Of cores / threads	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8
L1 cache (sum), I / D, KB	128/128	128/128	128/128	128/128	128/128
L2 cache, KB	4 × 256	4 × 256	4 × 256	4 × 256	4 × 256
L3 (L4) cache, MiB	8	8	8	6 (128)	8
RAM	2 × DDR3-1333	2 × DDR3-1600	2 × DDR3-1600	2 × DDR3-1600	2 × DDR4-2133
TDP, W	95	77	84	65	65
Graphics	HDG 3000	HDG 4000	HDG 4600	IPG 6200	HDG 530
Number of EU	12	16	20	48	24
Std / max frequency, MHz	850/1350	650/1150	350/1250	300/1150	350/1150
Price	T-7762352	T-7959318	T-10384297	T-12645073	T-12874268

To make it more academic, it would make sense to test Core i7-2600 and i7-4790, and not 2700K and 4770K at all, but the first one is already difficult to find in our time, while 2700K was found at hand and was tested at one time. As well as 4770K was also studied, and in the "ordinary" family it has full (4771) and close (4770) analogs, and all the mentioned trinity differs insignificantly from 4790, so we decided not to neglect the opportunity to minimize the amount of work. As a result, by the way, the Core processors of the second, third and fourth generations turned out to be as close to each other as possible in the official clock frequency range, and the 6700 differs only slightly from them. Broadwell could also have been "pulled up" to this level by taking the results not from i7-5775C, but from Xeon E3-1285 v4, but only to tighten up, and not completely eliminate the difference. That is why we decided to use a more massive (fortunately, most of the other participants are the same), and not an exotic processor.

As for the other test conditions, they were equal, but not the same: the operating memory frequency was the maximum supported by the specifications. But its volume (8 GB) and system storage (Toshiba THNSNH256GMCT with a capacity of 256 GB) were the same for all subjects.

Testing technique

To evaluate the performance, we used our methodology for measuring performance using benchmarks and iXBT Game Benchmark 2015. We normalized all the test results in the first benchmark relative to the results of the reference system, which this year will be the same for laptops and for all other computers, which is designed to facilitate the readers' hard work of comparison and selection:

iXBT Application Benchmark 2015

As we have written more than once, the video core is of no small importance in this group. However, not everything is as simple as one might suppose only from the technical characteristics - for example, the i7-5775C is still slower than the i7-6700, although the first has a much more powerful GPU. However, the comparison of 2700K and 3770 is even more revealing here, which differ fundamentally in terms of the execution of the OpenCL code - the former is not capable of using the GPU for this at all. The second is capable. But it does it so slowly that it has no advantages over its predecessor. On the other hand, endowing such capabilities with the "most massive GPU on the market" led to the fact that they began to be gradually used by software manufacturers, which was already apparent by the time the next generations of Core entered the market. And along with minor improvements and processor cores, it can lead to a fairly noticeable effect.

However, not everywhere - this is just the case when the growth from generation to generation is completely invisible. However, he is, but such that it is easier not to pay attention to him. Interesting here is perhaps the fact that the past year made it possible to combine such an increase in performance with significantly less stringent requirements for the cooling system (which opens the segment of compact systems to the usual desktop Core i7), but this is not true in all cases.

And here is an example, when a considerable part of the load has already been transferred to the GPU. The only thing that can "save" in this case the old Core i7 is a discrete video card, but the effect of data transfers over the bus spoils, so the i7-2700K in this case will not necessarily catch up with the i7-6700, but the 3770 is capable of it, but keep up neither for 4790K or 6700K, nor for 5775C with any video can no longer. Actually, the answer to the bewildered question that sometimes arises among some users - why does Intel pay so much attention to integrated graphics, if it is still not enough for games, but for other purposes it has been enough for a long time? As you can see, it is not too "enough" if the fastest is sometimes capable (as here) of a processor with far from the most powerful "processor" part. And already in advance I wonder what we can get from Skylake in the GT4e modification;)

Amazing unanimity, ensured that this program does not require new instruction sets or miracles in the field of increasing multi-threaded performance. There is still a slight difference between processor generations. But you can only look for it with exactly the same clock frequency. And when it differs significantly (what we have in the i7-5775С, which in single-threaded mode lags behind everyone by 10%) - you don't need to look for it :)

Audition "can" more or less everything. Unless he is rather indifferent to additional threads of computation, but he knows how to use them. Moreover, judging by the results, it does it better on Skylake than was characteristic of previous architectures: the advantage of 4770K over 4690K is about 15%, but 6700 bypasses 6600K by 20% (despite the fact that the frequencies are approximately equal for all). In general, most likely, many more discoveries will await us in the new architecture. Small, but sometimes cumulative.

As in the case of text recognition, where exactly the 6700 breaks away from its predecessors most "briskly". Although in absolute terms it is insignificant, it would be a priori too optimistic to wait for such an increase on relatively old and well-polished algorithms, taking into account the fact that, in fact, we have an energy-efficient processor (by the way, the 6700K really copes with this task much faster) ... We didn't expect. And practice turned out to be more interesting than a priori assumptions :)

All top-end processors cope with archivers very well regardless of generation. In many respects, it seems to us, because for them this task is already very simple. Actually, the count is already running for seconds, so it is almost impossible to radically improve something here. If only to speed up the memory system, but DDR4 has higher latencies than DDR3, so the guaranteed result is given only by an increase in caches. Therefore, the fastest was the only processor among the tested with a GPU GT3e - the fourth level cache is used not only by the video core. On the other hand, the gain from the additional die is not that great, so the archivers are just that load, which in the case of obviously fast systems (and not some mini-PCs) can no longer be ignored.

Plus or minus half a bast from the Sun, which, in general, also confirms that all top-end processors cope with such tasks in the same way, the controllers in the chipsets of the three series are approximately identical, so that a significant difference can only be caused by the drive.

But in such a banal scenario as a simple copying of files, also with a thermal package: models with a reduced "overclocking" are rather sluggish (fortunately, formally and for nothing), which leads to slightly lower results than they could. But in general, this is also not the case for the sake of which there may be a desire to change the platform.

What do we get in the end? All processors are roughly identical to each other. Yes, of course, the difference between the best and the worst is more than 10%, but do not forget that these are the differences that have accumulated over more than three years (and if we took the i7-2600, it would have been 15% in almost five). Thus, there is no practical sense in replacing one platform with another while the old one is working. Naturally, if we are talking about LGA1155 and its successors - as we have already seen, the "difference" between LGA1156 and LGA1155 is much more noticeable, and not only in terms of performance. On the latest Intel platforms, something can be squeezed out by using the "steroid" Core i7 (if you are still focusing on this expensive family), but not so much: in terms of integral performance, the i7-6700K outperforms the i7-6700 by 15%, so that its gap from some i7-2700K increases to almost 30%, which is already more significant, but still not important.

Game applications

For obvious reasons, for computer systems of this level, we restrict ourselves to the minimum quality mode, and not only in "full" resolution, but also with its reduction to 1366 × 768: Despite the obvious progress in the field of integrated graphics, it is not yet able to satisfy the demanding the quality of the gamer's picture. And we decided not to test the 2700K at all on a standard gaming set: it is obvious that those owners who use the integrated video core are not interested in games at all. Whoever is interested in any way, they certainly found and installed at least some kind of "plug for the slot" in the bins, since our testing according to the previous version of the methodology showed that HD Graphics 3000 is not better than even the Radeon HD 6450, and both practically not enough for anything. HDG 4000 and newer IGPs are of some interest.

For example, in Aliens vs. Predator can be played on any of the studied processors, but only at a lower resolution. For FHD, only GT3e is suitable, and it doesn't matter which one - it's just that in a socket version, this configuration is currently available only for Broadwell with all that it implies.

But the "dancers" at the minimum salaries already "run" on everything so well that a slender picture only in high resolution and "dances": in a low one it is not even clear - who is better and who is worse.

Grid2, with all its weak demands on the video part, still puts processors strictly in order of magnitude. But this is especially clearly seen again in FHD, where the memory bandwidth is already important. As a result, it is already possible not to lower the resolution on the i7-6700. On the i7-5775C, all the more so, and the absolute results are much higher, so if you are interested in this area of ​​application, and the use of a discrete video card is undesirable for some reason, there are still no alternatives to this line of processors. In which there is nothing new.

Only the older Haswells "draw" the game at least in low resolution, and Skylake does it without any reservations. We do not comment on Broadwell - this is not an architectural, but, let's say, quantitative superiority.

At first glance, the older game in the series is similar, but there are no quantitative differences between Haswell and Skylake.

In Hitman, there are also noticeable ones, but there is still no transition from quantity to quality.

As well as here, where even a low-resolution mode can only "pull out" a processor with a GT3e. The rest have significant, but still insufficient progress even for such "feats".

The minimum settings mode in this game is very gentle with all weak GPUs, although the HDG 4000 was still only "enough" for HD, but not FHD.

And again a difficult case. Less "heavy" than Thief, but sufficient to demonstrate clearly that no integrated graphics can be considered a gaming solution.

Although some games can be played with relative comfort. However, it can only be perceptible if we complicate the IGP and increase quantitatively all functional blocks. Actually, it is in light modes that the progress in the field of Intel GPUs is most noticeable - about twice in three years (there is no point in considering older developments seriously anymore). But this does not mean that over time, integrated graphics will be able to easily and naturally catch up with discrete graphics of comparable age. Most likely, "parity" will be established from the other side - bearing in mind the huge base of installed solutions of low performance, the manufacturers of the same games will be guided by it. Why haven't you done this before? Generally speaking, they did - if we consider not only 3D games, but the market in general, a huge number of very popular game projects were designed just to work normally on fairly archaic platforms. But there has always been a certain segment of programs that "moved the market", and it was this segment that attracted maximum attention from the press and not only. Now the process is clearly close to the saturation point, since, firstly, the park of various computer equipment is already very large, and there are fewer and fewer people willing to engage in permanent upgrades. And secondly, “multiplatform” now means not only specialized game consoles, but also various smartphones, where, obviously, the performance is even worse than that of “adult” computers, regardless of the degree of integration of the latter's platforms. But in order for this trend to become prevailing, it is necessary, nevertheless, as it seems to us, to achieve a certain level of guaranteed productivity. Which is not yet available. But all manufacturers are working on the problem more than actively and Intel is no exception.

Total

What do we see in the end? In principle, as has been said more than once, the last significant change in the processor cores of the Core family took place almost five years ago. At this stage, it has already been possible to reach such a level that none of the competitors can “attack” directly. Therefore, Intel's main task is to improve the situation in, let's say, related areas, as well as to increase quantitative (but not qualitative) indicators where it makes sense. Moreover, the growing popularity of portable computers, which have long outstripped desktop computers in terms of this indicator and are becoming more portable, has a serious impact on the mass market (a few years ago, for example, a laptop weighing 2 kg was still considered "relatively light", and now sales of transformers are actively growing , in which case a large mass kills the whole raison d'être of their existence). In general, the development of computer platforms has long gone not along the path of best meeting the needs of buyers of large desktop computers. At best, not to the detriment of them. Therefore, the fact that in general in this segment the performance of systems does not decrease, but even grows a little, is already a reason for joy - it could be worse :) The only bad thing is that due to changes in peripheral functionality you have to constantly change the platforms themselves: this is Such a traditional advantage of modular computers as maintainability greatly undermines, but there is nothing to be done about it - attempts to maintain compatibility at any cost do not bring any good (those who doubt can look at, for example, AMD AM3 +).

Almost always, under any publication that in one way or another touches on the performance of modern Intel processors, sooner or later there are several angry readers' comments that the progress in the development of Intel chips has long stalled and there is no point in switching from the "good old Core i7-2600K "For something new. In such remarks, it will most likely be annoying to mention productivity gains at the intangible level of "no more than five percent per year"; about the low-quality internal thermal interface, which irreparably spoiled modern Intel processors; or about the fact that in modern conditions to buy processors with the same number of cores as several years ago is the lot of short-sighted amateurs, since they do not have the necessary groundwork for the future.

There is no doubt that all such remarks are not groundless. However, it is very likely that they exaggerate the existing problems many times over. The 3DNews laboratory has been testing Intel processors in detail since 2000, and we cannot agree with the thesis that any development of them has come to an end, and what is happening to the microprocessor giant in recent years cannot be called anything other than stagnation. Yes, some fundamental changes rarely occur with Intel processors, but nevertheless they continue to be systematically improved. Therefore, the chips of the Core i7 series that you can buy today are certainly better than the models offered a few years ago.

Generation Core	Codename	Technical process	Development stage	Exit time
2	Sandy bridge	32 nm	So (Architecture)	I quarter. 2011
3	IvyBridge	22 nm	Tick ​​(Process)	II quarter. 2012
4	Haswell	22 nm	So (Architecture)	II quarter. 2013
5	Broadwell	14 nm	Tick ​​(Process)	II quarter. 2015
6	Skylake	14 nm	So (Architecture)	III quarter. 2015
7	KabyLake	14+ nm	Optimization	I quarter. 2017
8	CoffeeLake	14 ++ nm	Optimization	IV quarter. 2017

Actually, this material is just a counterargument for reasoning about the futility of Intel's chosen strategy of gradual development of consumer CPUs. We decided to collect in one test senior Intel processors for mainstream platforms over the past seven years and see in practice how the representatives of the Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake series have gone ahead with respect to the "reference" Sandy Bridge, which over the years of hypothetical comparisons and mental contrasts in the minds of ordinary people have become a real icon of processor design.

⇡ What has changed in Intel processors from 2011 to the present

Microarchitecture is considered to be the starting point in the recent history of Intel processors. SandyBridge... And this is no accident. Despite the fact that the first generation of processors under the Core brand was released in 2008 based on the Nehalem microarchitecture, almost all the main features that are inherent in modern mass CPUs of the microprocessor giant came into use not then, but a couple of years later, when the next generation became widespread. processor design, Sandy Bridge.

Now Intel has taught us to openly unhurried progress in the development of microarchitecture, when there are very few innovations and they almost do not lead to an increase in the specific performance of processor cores. But only seven years ago, the situation was radically different. In particular, the transition from Nehalem to Sandy Bridge was marked by a 15-20% increase in IPC (the number of instructions executed per clock cycle), which was due to a deep redesign of the logical design of the cores with an eye to increasing their efficiency.

Sandy Bridge was based on many principles that have not changed since then and have become standard for most processors today. For example, it was there that a separate zero-level cache appeared for decoded micro-operations, and a physical register file began to be used, which reduces energy consumption when algorithms for out-of-order execution of instructions are running.

But perhaps the most important innovation was that Sandy Bridge was designed as a unified system-on-a-chip, designed simultaneously for all classes of applications: server, desktop and mobile. Most likely, public opinion put it in the great-grandfather of modern Coffee Lake, and not some Nehalem, and certainly not Penryn, precisely because of this feature. However, the total sum of all the alterations in the depths of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture also turned out to be quite significant. In the end, this design lost all the old ties to the P6 (Pentium Pro) that had appeared here and there in all previous Intel processors.

Speaking about the general structure, one must also remember that a full-fledged graphics core was built into the Sandy Bridge processor crystal for the first time in the history of Intel CPUs. This block went inside the processor after the DDR3 memory controller shared by the L3 cache and the PCI Express bus controller. To connect computational cores and all other "extra-core" parts, Intel engineers implemented a new scalable ring bus in Sandy Bridge, which is used to organize interaction between structural units in subsequent mainstream CPUs to this day.

If we go down to the level of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, then one of its key features is support for the family of SIMD instructions, AVX, designed to work with 256-bit vectors. By now, such instructions have become commonplace and do not seem to be something unusual, but their implementation in Sandy Bridge required the expansion of a part of the computing executive devices. Intel engineers strived to make working with 256-bit data as fast as working with smaller vectors. Therefore, along with the implementation of full-fledged 256-bit executive devices, an increase in the speed of the processor with memory was also required. Logic actuators for loading and saving data in Sandy Bridge received double the performance, in addition, the bandwidth of the L1 cache when reading was symmetrically increased.

We cannot fail to mention the dramatic changes in the operation of the branch prediction unit made in Sandy Bridge. Thanks to optimizations in the applied algorithms and an increase in buffer sizes, the Sandy Bridge architecture has allowed to reduce the percentage of mispredictions of branches by almost half, which not only significantly affected performance, but also allowed to further reduce the power consumption of this design.

Ultimately, from today's perspective, Sandy Bridge processors could be called an exemplary embodiment of the "tock" phase in Intel's "tick-tock" principle. Like their predecessors, these processors continued to be based on the 32-nm process technology, but the performance increase they offered turned out to be more than convincing. And it was fueled not only by the updated microarchitecture, but also by the clock frequencies increased by 10-15 percent, as well as the introduction of a more aggressive version of the Turbo Boost 2.0 technology. Considering all this, it is clear why many enthusiasts still remember Sandy Bridge in their warmest words.

The senior offering in the Core i7 family at the time of the release of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture was the Core i7-2600K. This processor has a clock speed of 3.3 GHz with the ability to auto-overclock at partial load up to 3.8 GHz. However, the 32nm representatives of Sandy Bridge were distinguished not only by their relatively high clock frequencies for that time, but also by their good overclocking potential. Among the Core i7-2600K, one could often find specimens capable of operating at frequencies of 4.8-5.0 GHz, which was largely due to the use of a high-quality internal thermal interface in them - flux-free solder.

Nine months after the release of the Core i7-2600K, in October 2011, Intel updated the senior offering in the lineup and offered a slightly accelerated Core i7-2700K model, the nominal frequency of which was increased to 3.5 GHz, and the maximum frequency in turbo mode was up to 3.9 GHz.

However, the life cycle of the Core i7-2700K turned out to be short - in April 2012, the Sandy Bridge was replaced by an updated design. IvyBridge... Nothing special: Ivy Bridge belonged to the "tick" phase, that is, it was a transfer of the old microarchitecture to the new semiconductor rails. And in this regard, the progress was really serious - the Ivy Bridge crystals were produced using a 22-nm technological process based on three-dimensional FinFET transistors, which at that time were just coming into use.

At the same time, the old Sandy Bridge microarchitecture at the low level remained practically intact. There were only a few cosmetic tweaks that made Ivy Bridge faster and slightly more efficient with Hyper-Threading. True, along the way, the "extra-nuclear" components were somewhat improved. The PCI Express controller received compatibility with the third version of the protocol, and the memory controller increased its capabilities and began to support high-speed DDR3 overclocking memory. But in the end, the increase in specific productivity during the transition from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge was no more than 3-5 percent.

The new technological process did not give serious reasons for joy either. Unfortunately, the introduction of 22-nm standards did not allow to somehow fundamentally increase the clock frequencies of the Ivy Bridge. The older version of the Core i7-3770K received a nominal frequency of 3.5 GHz with the ability to overclock in turbo mode up to 3.9 GHz, that is, from the point of view of the frequency formula, it turned out to be no faster than the Core i7-2700K. Only energy efficiency has improved, but desktop users traditionally have little concern about this aspect.

All this, of course, can be easily attributed to the fact that no breakthroughs should occur at the “tick” stage, but in some ways Ivy Bridge turned out to be even worse than its predecessors. It's about overclocking. When launching carriers of this design, Intel decided to abandon the use of a heat-spreader cap to a semiconductor crystal in the final assembly of processors with gallium-free soldering. Starting with Ivy Bridge, banal thermal paste was used to organize the internal thermal interface, and this immediately hit the maximum achievable frequencies. The overclocking potential of Ivy Bridge has definitely gotten worse, and as a result, the transition from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge has become one of the most controversial moments in recent history of Intel consumer processors.

Therefore, to the next stage of evolution, Haswell, special hopes were pinned. In this generation, in the "so" phase, major microarchitectural improvements were to appear, from which the ability was expected to at least push forward the stalled progress. And to some extent it happened. Introduced in the summer of 2013, the fourth-generation Core processors have indeed made noticeable improvements in their internal structure.

The main thing: the theoretical power of Haswell execution units, expressed in the number of micro-operations executed per clock cycle, has grown by a third compared to previous CPUs. The new microarchitecture not only rebalanced the existing executive devices, but also added two additional executive ports for integer operations, branching and address generation. In addition, the microarchitecture received compatibility with an extended set of vector 256-bit AVX2 instructions, which, thanks to three-operand FMA instructions, doubled the architecture's peak throughput.

In addition to this, Intel engineers revised the capacity of the internal buffers and, where necessary, increased them. The planner window has grown in size. In addition, the integer and real physical register files were increased, which improved the processor's ability to reorder the order of execution of instructions. In addition to all this, the cache memory subsystem has also changed significantly. L1- and L2-caches in Haswell got twice as wide bus.

It would seem that the listed improvements should be enough to noticeably raise the specific performance of the new microarchitecture. But no matter how it is. The problem with Haswell's design was that it left the input part of the execution pipeline unchanged and the x86 decoder retained the same performance as before. That is, the maximum decoding rate of the x86 code in the microinstruction remained at the level of 4-5 instructions per clock cycle. As a result, when comparing Haswell and Ivy Bridge at the same frequency and under a load that does not use the new AVX2 instructions, the performance gain was only 5-10 percent.

The image of the Haswell microarchitecture was also spoiled by the first wave of processors released on its basis. Relying on the same 22nm process technology as the Ivy Bridge, the new products were unable to offer high frequencies. For example, the older Core i7-4770K again received a base frequency of 3.5 GHz and a maximum frequency in turbo mode at 3.9 GHz, that is, in comparison with previous generations of Core, there has been no progress.

At the same time, with the introduction of the next technological process with 14nm norms, Intel began to face all sorts of difficulties, so a year later, in the summer of 2014, not the next generation of Core processors was brought to the market, but the second phase of Haswell, which was codenamed Haswell Refresh, or, if we talk about flagship modifications, then Devil's Canyon. As part of this update, Intel was able to noticeably increase the clock speeds of the 22nm CPU, which really breathed new life into them. As an example, we can cite the new senior processor Core i7-4790K, which took the 4.0 GHz mark at the nominal frequency and got the maximum frequency, taking into account the turbo mode, at 4.4 GHz. Surprisingly, such a half-gigahertz acceleration was achieved without any technical process reforms, but only due to simple cosmetic changes in the processor power circuit and due to the improvement of the heat-conducting properties of the thermal paste used under the CPU cover.

However, even the representatives of the Devil's Canyon family could not become the proposals especially complained about among the enthusiasts. Against the background of the results of Sandy Bridge, their overclocking was not outstanding, besides, reaching high frequencies required complex "scalping" - dismantling the processor cover and then replacing the standard thermal interface with some material with better thermal conductivity.

Due to the difficulties that followed Intel in transferring mass production to 14nm standards, the performance of the next, fifth generation of Core processors, Broadwell, it turned out to be very crumpled. For a long time, the company could not decide whether it was worth launching desktop processors with this design on the market at all, since when trying to manufacture large semiconductor crystals, the defect rate exceeded acceptable values. Ultimately, Broadwell quad-cores intended for desktop computers did appear, but, firstly, this happened only in the summer of 2015 - with a nine-month delay in relation to the originally planned date, and secondly, already two months after their announcement, Intel presented the design next generation, Skylake.

Nevertheless, from the point of view of the development of the microarchitecture, Broadwell can hardly be called a secondary development. Moreover, this generation of desktop processors used solutions that Intel had never resorted to either before or since. The uniqueness of the desktop Broadwell was determined by the fact that they were penetrated by the productive integrated graphics core Iris Pro of the GT3e level. And this means not only that the processors of this family had the most powerful integrated video core at that time, but also that they were equipped with an additional 22-nm Crystall Well crystal, which is a fourth-level cache memory based on eDRAM.

The reason for adding a separate chip of fast integrated memory to the processor is quite obvious and is due to the needs of a productive integrated graphics core in a frame buffer with low latency and high bandwidth. However, the eDRAM installed in Broadwell was architecturally designed as a victim cache, and the computational cores of the CPU could also use it. As a result, desktop Broadwell became the only mass processors of their kind with 128 MB L4 cache. True, the volume of the L3 cache located in the processor chip suffered a little, which was reduced from 8 to 6 MB.

Some improvements have been incorporated into the basic microarchitecture as well. Although Broadwell was in the tick phase, the rework touched the inlet of the execution pipeline. The out-of-order execution scheduler window was enlarged, the volume of the table of associative translation of second-level addresses increased by one and a half times, and, in addition, the entire translation scheme acquired a second miss handler, which made it possible to process two address translation operations in parallel. In sum, all the innovations have increased the efficiency of out-of-order execution of commands and prediction of complex code branches. Along the way, the mechanisms for performing multiplication operations were improved, which in Broadwell began to be processed at a significantly faster pace. As a result of all this, Intel was even able to argue that improvements in microarchitecture increased the specific performance of Broadwell compared to Haswell by about five percent.

But despite all this, it was impossible to talk about any significant advantage of the first 14-nm desktop processors. Both the L4 cache and microarchitectural changes only tried to compensate for Broadwell's main flaw - low clock frequencies. Due to problems with the technological process, the base frequency of the older member of the family, Core i7-5775C, was set only at 3.3 GHz, and the turbo frequency did not exceed 3.7 GHz, which turned out to be worse than the characteristics of Devil's Canyon by as much as 700 MHz.

A similar story happened with overclocking. The maximum frequencies to which it was possible to heat up the desktop Broadwell without using advanced cooling methods were in the region of 4.1-4.2 GHz. Therefore, it is not surprising that consumers were skeptical about the release of Broadwell, and the processors of this family remained a strange niche solution for those who were interested in a productive integrated graphics core. The very first full-fledged 14-nm chip for desktop computers, which was able to attract the attention of wide layers of users, was only the next project of the microprocessor giant - Skylake.

Skylake, like the previous generation processors, was manufactured using a 14nm process technology. However, here Intel was already able to achieve normal clock speeds and overclocking: the older desktop version of Skylake, Core i7-6700K, received a nominal frequency of 4.0 GHz and auto-overclocking within turbo mode to 4.2 GHz. These are slightly lower values ​​when compared with the Devil's Canyon, but the newer processors are definitely faster than their predecessors. The fact is that Skylake is "so" in Intel's nomenclature, which means significant changes in the microarchitecture.

And they really are. At first glance, there were not many improvements in the Skylake design, but they were all purposeful and made it possible to eliminate the existing weaknesses in the microarchitecture. In short, Skylake got larger internal buffers for deeper out-of-order execution of instructions and higher cache memory bandwidth. Improvements have been made to the branch prediction block and the input portion of the execution pipeline. The rate of execution of division instructions has also been increased, and the mechanisms for executing addition, multiplication and FMA instructions have been rebalanced. To top it off, the developers have worked to improve the efficiency of Hyper-Threading technology. In total, this has resulted in an approximately 10 percent improvement in performance per clock compared to previous generations of processors.

In general, Skylake can be characterized as a deep enough optimization of the original Core architecture, so that no bottlenecks remain in the processor design. On the one hand, due to the increase in decoder power (from 4 to 5 micro-ops per clock) and the speed of the micro-ops cache (from 4 to 6 micro-ops per clock), the instruction decoding rate has significantly increased. On the other hand, the efficiency of processing the resulting micro-operations has increased, which was facilitated by the deepening of out-of-order execution algorithms and the redistribution of the capabilities of the execution ports along with a serious revision of the execution rate of a number of ordinary, SSE and AVX commands.

For example, Haswell and Broadwell had two ports each for performing multiplications and FMA operations on real numbers, but only one port was intended for additions, which did not correspond well to the real program code. In Skylake, this imbalance was eliminated and additions began to be performed on two ports. In addition, the number of ports capable of handling integer vector instructions has grown from two to three. Ultimately, all this led to the fact that for almost any type of operation in Skylake there are always several alternative ports. This means that in the microarchitecture, almost all possible reasons for the downtime of the pipeline were finally successfully eliminated.

Noticeable changes have also affected the caching subsystem: the bandwidth of the L2 and L3 cache memory has been increased. In addition, the associativity of the L2 cache was reduced, which ultimately made it possible to improve its efficiency and reduce the penalty when processing misses.

Substantial changes have also taken place at a higher level. So, in Skylake, the bandwidth of the ring bus, which connects all processor units, has doubled. In addition, a new memory controller has settled in this generation of CPUs, which has received compatibility with DDR4 SDRAM. And in addition to this, a new DMI 3.0 bus with doubled bandwidth was used to connect the processor to the chipset, which made it possible to implement high-speed PCI Express 3.0 lines, including through the chipset.

However, like all previous versions of the Core architecture, Skylake was another variation on the original design. This means that in the sixth generation of the Core microarchitecture, Intel developers continued to adhere to the tactics of phased implementation of improvements at each development cycle. In general, this is not a very impressive approach, which does not allow you to see any significant changes in performance right away - when comparing CPUs from neighboring generations. But on the other hand, when modernizing old systems, it is not difficult to notice a tangible increase in performance. For example, Intel itself willingly compared Skylake to Ivy Bridge, while demonstrating that in three years the speed of processors has increased by more than 30 percent.

And in fact, it was quite a serious progress, because then everything became much worse. After Skylake, any improvement in the specific performance of processor cores stopped altogether. The processors currently on the market still continue to use the Skylake microarchitectural design, despite the fact that almost three years have passed since its introduction in desktop processors. The unexpected downtime was due to the fact that Intel was unable to cope with the implementation of the next version of the semiconductor process with 10nm norms. As a result, the whole "tick-tock" principle fell apart, forcing the microprocessor giant to somehow get out and engage in multiple re-release of old products under new names.

Generation processors KabyLake, which appeared on the market at the very beginning of 2017, became the first and very striking example of Intel's attempts to sell the same Skylake to customers for the second time. The close family ties between the two generations of processors were not particularly hidden. Intel honestly said that Kaby Lake is no longer a "tick" or "so", but a simple optimization of the previous design. At the same time, the word "optimization" meant some improvements in the structure of 14-nm transistors, which opened up the possibility of increasing clock frequencies without changing the frame of the thermal package. For the modified technical process, a special term "14+ nm" was even coined. Thanks to this manufacturing technology, Kaby Lake's senior mainstream desktop processor, dubbed the Core i7-7700K, was able to offer users a nominal 4.2 GHz frequency and a 4.5 GHz turbo frequency.

Thus, the increase in frequencies of Kaby Lake compared to the original Skylake was about 5 percent, and that was all, which, frankly, cast doubt on the legality of attributing Kaby Lake to the next generation of Core. Up to this point, each subsequent generation of processors, no matter whether it belonged to the "tick" or "tock" phase, provided at least some increase in the IPC indicator. Meanwhile, in Kaby Lake there were no microarchitectural improvements at all, so it would be more logical to consider these processors just the second stepping of Skylake.

However, the new version of the 14-nm technical process still managed to prove itself in some ways: the overclocking potential of Kaby Lake compared to Skylake grew by about 200-300 MHz, due to which the processors of this series were warmly received by enthusiasts. True, Intel continued to use thermal paste under the processor cover instead of solder, so scalping was necessary to fully overclock Kaby Lake.

Intel did not cope with the commissioning of 10-nm technology by the beginning of this year. Therefore, at the end of last year, another type of processors based on the same Skylake microarchitecture was introduced to the market - CoffeeLake... But talking about Coffee Lake as the third guise of Skylake is not entirely correct. Last year was a period of a radical paradigm shift in the processor market. AMD returned to the "big game", which was able to break the established traditions and create demand for mass processors with more than four cores. Suddenly, Intel found itself in a catch-up role, and the release of Coffee Lake was not so much an attempt to fill the gap before the long-awaited 10nm Core processors, but rather a reaction to the release of six- and eight-core AMD Ryzen processors.

As a result, Coffee Lake processors received an important structural difference from their predecessors: the number of cores in them was increased to six, which was the first time with the mainstream Intel platform. However, at the same time, no changes were introduced at the microarchitecture level: Coffee Lake is essentially a six-core Skylake, assembled on the basis of exactly the same computational cores in terms of internal structure, which are equipped with an L3 cache increased to 12 MB (according to the standard principle of 2 MB per core ) and are united by the usual ring bus.

However, despite the fact that we so easily allow ourselves to talk about Coffee Lake "nothing new", it is not entirely fair to say that there have been no changes. Although nothing has changed in the microarchitecture again, Intel specialists had to spend a lot of effort in order for the six-core processors to fit into the standard desktop platform. And the result was quite convincing: the six-core processors remained faithful to the usual thermal package and, moreover, did not slow down at all in clock frequencies.

In particular, the senior representative of the Coffee Lake generation, the Core i7-8700K, received a base frequency of 3.7 GHz, and in turbo mode it can accelerate to 4.7 GHz. At the same time, the overclocking potential of Coffee Lake, despite its more massive semiconductor crystal, turned out to be even better than that of all its predecessors. Core i7-8700K are often brought by their ordinary owners to the 5 GHz line, and such overclocking can be real even without scalping and replacing the internal thermal interface. And this means that Coffee Lake, although extensive, is a significant step forward.

All this became possible exclusively due to the next improvement of the 14nm technological process. In the fourth year of its use for mass production of desktop chips, Intel managed to achieve really impressive results. The implemented third version of the 14-nm standards ("14 ++ nm" in the manufacturer's designations) and the rearrangement of the semiconductor crystal made it possible to significantly improve performance in terms of each watt spent and increase the total computing power. With the introduction of the six-core Intel, perhaps, was able to take an even more significant step forward than any of the previous microarchitecture improvements. And today Coffee Lake looks like a very tempting option for modernizing old systems based on previous carriers of the Core microarchitecture.

Codename	Technical process	Number of cores	GPU	L3 cache, MB	Number of transistors, billion	Crystal area, mm 2
Sandy bridge	32 nm	4	GT2	8	1,16	216
Ivy bridge	22 nm	4	GT2	8	1,2	160
Haswell	22 nm	4	GT2	8	1,4	177
Broadwell	14 nm	4	GT3e	6	N / a	~ 145 + 77 (eDRAM)
Skylake	14 nm	4	GT2	8	N / a	122
Kaby lake	14+ nm	4	GT2	8	N / a	126
Coffee lake	14 ++ nm	6	GT2	12	N / a	150

⇡ Processors and Platforms: Specifications

To compare the last seven generations of Core i7, we took the senior representatives in the respective series - one from each design. The main characteristics of these processors are shown in the following table.

	Core i7-2700K	Core i7-3770K	Core i7-4790K	Core i7-5775C	Core i7-6700K	Core i7-7700K	Core i7-8700K
Codename	Sandy bridge	Ivy bridge	Haswell (Devil's Canyon)	Broadwell	Skylake	Kaby lake	Coffee lake
Production technology, nm	32	22	22	14	14	14+	14++
release date	23.10.2011	29.04.2012	2.06.2014	2.06.2015	5.08.2015	3.01.2017	5.10.2017
Kernels / threads	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8	6/12
Base frequency, GHz	3,5	3,5	4,0	3,3	4,0	4,2	3,7
Turbo Boost frequency, GHz	3,9	3,9	4,4	3,7	4,2	4,5	4,7
L3 cache, MB	8	8	8	6 (+128 MB eDRAM)	8	8	12
Memory support	DDR3-1333	DDR3-1600	DDR3-1600	DDR3L-1600	DDR4-2133	DDR4-2400	DDR4-2666
Instruction set extensions	AVX	AVX	AVX2	AVX2	AVX2	AVX2	AVX2
Integrated graphics	HD 3000 (12 EU)	HD 4000 (16 EU)	HD 4600 (20 EU)	Iris Pro 6200 (48 EU)	HD 530 (24 EU)	HD 630 (24 EU)	UHD 630 (24 EU)
Max. graphics core frequency, GHz	1,35	1,15	1,25	1,15	1,15	1,15	1,2
PCI Express version	2.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
PCI Express Lines	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
TDP, W	95	77	88	65	91	91	95
Socket	LGA1155	LGA1155	LGA1150	LGA1150	LGA1151	LGA1151	LGA1151v2
Official price	$332	$332	$339	$366	$339	$339	$359

Interestingly, in the seven years since the release of Sandy Bridge, Intel has not been able to noticeably increase the clock speeds. Despite the fact that the technological production process has changed twice and the microarchitecture has been seriously optimized twice, today's Core i7 has hardly advanced in terms of its operating frequency. The newest Core i7-8700K has a nominal frequency of 3.7 GHz, which is only 6 percent higher than the frequency of the 2011 Core i7-2700K.

However, such a comparison is not entirely correct, because Coffee Lake has one and a half times more processing cores. If we focus on the quad-core Core i7-7700K, then the increase in frequency looks still more convincing: this processor accelerated relative to the 32-nm Core i7-2700K by a fairly significant 20 percent in megahertz terms. Although it can hardly be called an impressive gain anyway: in absolute terms, this translates into an increase of 100 MHz per year.

There are no breakthroughs in other formal characteristics either. Intel continues to supply all of its processors with an individual L2 cache of 256 KB per core, as well as a shared L3 cache for all cores, the size of which is determined at the rate of 2 MB per core. In other words, the main factor that has made the greatest progress is the number of cores. Core development started with quad-core CPUs, and came to six-core ones. Moreover, it is obvious that this is not the end, and in the near future we will see eight-core versions of Coffee Lake (or Whiskey Lake).

However, as it is easy to see, Intel's pricing policy has remained almost unchanged for seven years. Even the six-core Coffee Lake has risen in price by only six percent compared to the previous four-core flagships. All the rest of the older Core i7 class processors for the mass platform have always cost consumers about $ 330-340.

It is curious that the biggest changes took place not even with the processors themselves, but with their support for RAM. The throughput of dual-channel SDRAM has doubled since the release of Sandy Bridge until today: from 21.3 GB / s to 41.6 GB / s. And this is another important circumstance that determines the advantage of modern systems compatible with high-speed DDR4 memory.

Anyway, all these years, the rest of the platform has evolved along with the processors. If we are talking about the main milestones in the development of the platform, then, in addition to the increase in the speed of compatible memory, I would also like to note the emergence of support for the PCI Express 3.0 graphics interface. It seems that fast memory and fast graphics bus, along with advances in frequencies and processor architectures, are powerful reasons why modern systems are better and faster than the past. DDR4 SDRAM support appeared in Skylake, and the transfer of the PCI Express processor bus to the third version of the protocol took place in Ivy Bridge.

In addition, the system logic sets accompanying the processors received a noticeable development. Indeed, today's Intel chipsets of the three hundredth series can offer much more interesting features in comparison with the Intel Z68 and Z77, which were used in LGA1155 motherboards for the Sandy Bridge generation processors. This is easy to verify from the following table, in which we have brought together the characteristics of the flagship Intel chipsets for the mass platform.

	P67 / Z68	Z77	Z87	Z97	Z170	Z270	Z370
CPU Compatibility	Sandy bridge Ivy bridge		Haswell	Haswell Broadwell	Skylake Kaby lake		Coffee lake
Interface	DMI 2.0 (2 GB / s)				DMI 3.0 (3.93 GB / s)
PCI Express standard	2.0				3.0
PCI Express Lines	8				20	24
PCIe M.2 support	No			There is	Yes, up to 3 devices
PCI support	There is	No
SATA 6Gb / s	2		6
SATA 3Gb / s	4		0
USB 3.1 Gen2	0
USB 3.0	0	4	6		10
USB 2.0	14	10	8		4

In modern sets of logic, the possibilities for connecting high-speed storage media have significantly developed. Most importantly, thanks to the transition of chipsets to the PCI Express 3.0 bus, today in high-performance assemblies you can use high-speed NVMe drives, which, even compared to SATA SSDs, can offer noticeably better responsiveness and faster read and write speeds. And this alone can become a strong argument in favor of modernization.

In addition, modern system logic sets provide much richer options for connecting additional devices. And we are not only talking about a significant increase in the number of PCI Express lanes, which ensures the presence of several additional PCIe slots on the boards, replacing conventional PCI. Along the way, today's chipsets also have native support for USB 3.0 ports, and many modern motherboards are equipped with USB 3.1 Gen2 ports.

⇡ Description of test systems and testing methods

In order to test seven fundamentally different Intel Core i7 processors released over the past seven years, we needed to assemble four platforms with processor sockets LGA1155, LGA1150, LGA1151 and LGA1151v2. The set of components that turned out to be necessary for this is described by the following list:

• Processors:
  • Intel Core i7-8700K (Coffee Lake, 6 cores + HT, 3.7-4.7 GHz, 12 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-7700K (Kaby Lake, 4 cores + HT, 4.2-4.5 GHz, 8 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake, 4 cores, 4.0-4.2 GHz, 8 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-5775C (Broadwell, 4 cores, 3.3-3.7 GHz, 6 MB L3, 128 MB L4);
  • Intel Core i7-4790K (Haswell Refresh, 4 cores + HT, 4.0-4.4 GHz, 8 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.5-3.9 GHz, 8 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-2700K (Sandy Bridge, 4 cores + HT, 3.5-3.9 GHz, 8 MB L3).
  • CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S.
• Motherboards:
  • ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero (LGA1151v2, Intel Z370);
  • ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero (LGA1151, Intel Z270);
  • ASUS Z97-Pro (LGA1150, Intel Z97);
  • ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe (LGA1155, Intel Z77).
• Memory:
  • 2 × 8 GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, 9-11-11-31 (G.Skill TridentX F3-2133C9D-16GTX);
  • 2 × 8 GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM, 16-16-16-36 (G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-3200C16D-16GTZR).
  • Video card: NVIDIA Titan X (GP102, 12 GB / 384-bit GDDR5X, 1417-1531 / 10000 MHz).
  • Disk subsystem: Samsung 860 PRO 1TB (MZ-76P1T0BW).
  • PSU: Corsair RM850i ​​(80 Plus Gold, 850W).

Testing was performed on Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise (v1709) Build 16299 using the following set of drivers:

• Intel Chipset Driver 10.1.1.45;
• Intel Management Engine Interface Driver 11.7.0.1017;
• NVIDIA GeForce 391.35 Driver.

Description of the tools used to measure computational performance:

Complex benchmarks:

• Futuremark PCMark 10 Professional Edition 1.0.1275 - testing in scenarios Essentials (typical work of the average user: launching applications, surfing the Internet, video conferencing), Productivity (office work with a word processor and spreadsheets), Digital Content Creation (digital content creation: editing photos, nonlinear video editing, rendering and visualization of 3D models). OpenCL hardware acceleration has been disabled in testing.
• Futuremark 3DMark Professional Edition 2.4.4264 - testing in the Time Spy Extreme 1.0 scene.

Applications:

• Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 - performance testing for graphics processing. This measures the average execution time of a test script that is a creatively reworked Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed ​​Test that includes typical processing of four 24-megapixel images captured by a digital camera.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC 7.1 - performance testing for batch processing of a series of images in RAW format. The test scenario includes post-processing and JPEG export at 1920 × 1080 resolution and maximum quality of two hundred 16MP RAW images taken with a Fujifilm X-T1 digital camera.
• Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 - Performance testing for non-linear video editing. This measures the rendering time to H.264 of a Blu-Ray project containing HDV 1080p25 footage with various effects overlay.
• Blender 2.79b - testing the speed of the final rendering in one of the popular free packages for creating three-dimensional graphics. The time taken to build the final model from Blender Cycles Benchmark rev4 is measured.
• Corona 1.3 - testing rendering speed using the renderer of the same name. This measures the build speed of a standard BTR scene used to measure performance.
• Google Chrome 65.0.3325.181 (64-bit) - performance testing of Internet applications built using modern technologies. A specialized test WebXPRT 3 is used, which implements algorithms that are actually used in Internet applications in HTML5 and JavaScript.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 (15.1) - measuring the compilation time of a large MSVC project - a professional package for creating three-dimensional graphics Blender version 2.79b.
• Stockfish 9 - testing the speed of a popular chess engine. The speed of enumerating options in the position "1q6 / 1r2k1p1 / 4pp1p / 1P1b1P2 / 3Q4 / 7P / 4B1P1 / 2R3K1 w" is measured;
• V-Ray 3.57.01 - testing the performance of the popular rendering system using the standard V-Ray Benchmark application;
• VeraCrypt 1.22.9 - cryptographic performance testing. The benchmark built into the program is used, which uses Kuznyechik-Serpent-Camellia triple encryption.
• WinRAR 5.50 - testing the speed of archiving. The time taken by the archiver to compress a directory with various files with a total volume of 1.7 GB is measured. The maximum compression ratio is used.
• x264 r2851 - testing the speed of video transcoding to H.264 / AVC format. To evaluate performance, the original [email protected] AVC video file with a bit rate of about 30 Mbps.
• x265 2.4 + 14 8bpp - testing the speed of video transcoding into the promising H.265 / HEVC format. To evaluate the performance, the same video file is used as in the x264 transcoding speed test.

Games:

• Ashes of Singularity. 1920 × 1080 resolution: DirectX 11, Quality Profile = High, MSAA = 2x. 3840x2160 resolution: DirectX 11, Quality Profile = Extreme, MSAA = Off.
• Assassin's Creed: Origins. 1920 × 1080 resolution: Graphics Quality = Very High. Resolution 3840 × 2160: Graphics Quality = Very High.
• Battlefield 1. Resolution 1920 × 1080: DirectX 11, Graphics Quality = Ultra. 3840x2160 resolution: DirectX 11, Graphics Quality = Ultra.
• Civilization VI. 1920 x 1080 resolution: DirectX 11, MSAA = 4x, Performance Impact = Ultra, Memory Impact = Ultra. 3840x2160 resolution: DirectX 11, MSAA = 4x, Performance Impact = Ultra, Memory Impact = Ultra.
• Far Cry 5. Resolution 1920 × 1080: Graphics Quality = Ultra, Anti-Aliasing = TAA, Motion Blur = On. 3840x2160 resolution: Graphics Quality = Ultra, Anti-Aliasing = TAA, Motion Blur = On.
• Grand Theft Auto V. Resolution 1920 × 1080: DirectX Version = DirectX 11, FXAA = Off, MSAA = x4, NVIDIA TXAA = Off, Population Density = Maximum, Population Variety = Maximum, Distance Scaling = Maximum, Texture Quality = Very High, Shader Quality = Very High, Shadow Quality = Very High, Reflection Quality = Ultra, Reflection MSAA = x4, Water Quality = Very High, Particles Quality = Very High, Grass Quality = Ultra, Soft Shadow = Softest, Post FX = Ultra, In -Game Depth Of Field Effects = On, Anisotropic Filtering = x16, Ambient Occlusion = High, Tessellation = Very High, Long Shadows = On, High Resolution Shadows = On, High Detail Streaming While Flying = On, Extended Distance Scaling = Maximum, Extended Shadows Distance = Maximum. Resolution 3840x2160: DirectX Version = DirectX 11, FXAA = Off, MSAA = Off, NVIDIA TXAA = Off, Population Density = Maximum, Population Variety = Maximum, Distance Scaling = Maximum, Texture Quality = Very High, Shader Quality = Very High , Shadow Quality = Very High, Reflection Quality = Ultra, Reflection MSAA = x4, Water Quality = Very High, Particles Quality = Very High, Grass Quality = Ultra, Soft Shadow = Softest, Post FX = Ultra, In-Game Depth Of Field Effects = On, Anisotropic Filtering = x16, Ambient Occlusion = High, Tessellation = Very High, Long Shadows = On, High Resolution Shadows = On, High Detail Streaming While Flying = On, Extended Distance Scaling = Maximum, Extended Shadows Distance = Maximum.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Resolution 1920 × 1080, Graphics Preset = Ultra, Postprocessing Preset = High. Resolution 3840 × 2160, Graphics Preset = Ultra, Postprocessing Preset = High.
• Total War: Warhammer II. 1920 × 1080 resolution: DirectX 12, Quality = Ultra. 3840x2160 resolution: DirectX 12, Quality = Ultra.
• Watch Dogs 2. Resolution 1920 × 1080: Field of View = 70 °, Pixel Density = 1.00, Graphics Quality = Ultra, Extra Details = 100%. Resolution 3840x2160: Field of View = 70 °, Pixel Density = 1.00, Graphics Quality = Ultra, Extra Details = 100%.

In all gaming tests, the results are the average number of frames per second, as well as 0.01-quantile (first percentile) for fps values. The use of 0.01-quantile instead of the minimum fps indicators is due to the desire to clear the results from random performance spikes that were provoked by reasons not directly related to the operation of the main platform components.

⇡ Performance in complex benchmarks

Comprehensive test PCMark 8 shows the weighted average system performance when working in typical common applications of various kinds. And it illustrates well the progress that Intel processors underwent at each stage of the design change. If we talk about the basic Essentials scenario, then the average speed gain for each generation does not exceed the notorious 5 percent. However, it stands out against the general background of the Core i7-4790K, which, thanks to improvements in the microarchitecture and an increase in clock frequencies, was able to provide a good leap in performance beyond the average level. This leap can be seen in the Productivity scenario, according to the results of which the speed of the Core i7-4790K is comparable to the performance of the older processors in the Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake families.

The third scenario, Digital Content Creation, which combines resource-intensive creative tasks, gives a completely different picture. Here the fresh Core i7-8700K boasts an 80 percent advantage over the Core i7-2700K, which can be regarded as more than a worthy result of seven years of microarchitecture evolution. Of course, a significant part of this advantage is explained by the increase in the number of computing cores, but even if we compare the performance of the quad-core Core i7-2700K and Core i7-7700K, then in this case the speed gain reaches a solid 53 percent.

The synthetic gaming benchmark 3DMark highlights the advantages of the new processors even more. We use the Time Spy Extreme scenario, which has enhanced optimizations for multi-core architectures, and in it the final rating of the Core i7-8700K is almost three times higher than that of the Core i7-2700K. But a two-fold advantage over Sandy Bridge is also shown by a representative of the Kaby Lake generation, which, like all its predecessors, has four processing cores.

Curiously, the most successful improvement to the original microarchitecture, judging by the results, should be considered the transition from Ivy Bridge to Haswell - at this stage, according to 3D Mark, performance increased by 34 percent. However, Coffee Lake, of course, also has something to brag about, however, Intel processors from 2017-2018 have exactly the same microarchitecture as Skylake, and stand out solely due to extensive amplification - an increase in the number of cores.

⇡ Performance in resource-intensive applications

Overall, application performance has grown significantly over the past seven years of Intel processor evolution. And here we are not talking about the five percent per year, about which it is customary to joke in the ranks of the intellectual-haters. Today's Core i7s are more than double their 2011 predecessors. Of course, the transition to a six-core system played a big role here, but microarchitectural improvements and an increase in the clock frequency made a significant contribution. The most effective design in this regard was Haswell. It significantly increased the frequency, and also appeared support for AVX2 instructions, which gradually became stronger in applications for working with multimedia content and in rendering tasks.

It is worth noting that in a number of cases, upgrading processors in systems on which professional tasks are solved can provide a truly breakthrough improvement in operating speed. In particular, a threefold increase in performance when moving from Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake can be obtained when transcoding video with modern encoders, as well as in the final rendering using V-Ray. A good increase is also noted with non-linear video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. However, even if your field of activity is not directly related to solving such problems, in any of the applications we tested, the increase was at least 50 percent.

Rendering:

Photo processing:

Video processing:

Video transcoding:

Compilation:

Archiving:

Encryption:

Chess:

Internet surfing:

In order to more clearly imagine how the power of Intel processors has changed with the change of the last seven generations of microarchitecture, we have compiled a special table. It shows the percentage values ​​of the average performance gain in resource-intensive applications, obtained when changing from one flagship processor of the Core i7 series to another.

As you can see, Coffee Lake has proven to be the most significant design update for Intel's mainstream processors. A 1.5-fold increase in the number of cores gives the speed a significant boost, thanks to which you can get a very noticeable acceleration even with processors of recent generations when switching to the Core i7-8700K. Intel has seen a comparable increase in performance since 2011 only once - with the introduction of the Haswell processor design (improved by Devil's Canyon). Then it was due to serious changes in the microarchitecture, which were carried out simultaneously with a noticeable increase in the clock frequency.

⇡ Gaming performance

The fact that the performance of Intel processors is steadily increasing is well seen by users of resource-intensive applications. However, there is a different opinion among the players. Still, games, even the most modern ones, do not use sets of vector instructions, are poorly optimized for multithreading, and generally scale their performance at a much more restrained pace due to the fact that, in addition to computing resources, they also need graphics. So does it make sense to upgrade processors for those who use computers primarily for games?

Let's try to answer this question as well. To begin with, we present the test results in FullHD resolution, where the processor dependence is manifested more strongly, since the graphics card is not a serious limitation for the fps indicator and allows the processors to demonstrate what they are capable of more clearly.

The situation is similar in different games, so let's take a look at the average relative indicators of gaming performance in FullHD. They are summarized in the following table, which shows the gains obtained when switching from one flagship processor of the Core i7 series to another.

Indeed, gaming performance scales much less when new generations of processors are released than in applications. If it could be said that over the past seven years Intel's processors have approximately doubled, then in terms of gaming applications, the Core i7-8700K is only 36 percent faster than Sandy Bridge. And if you compare the latest Core i7 with some Haswell, then the advantage of the Core i7-8700K will be only 11 percent, despite a 1.5-fold increase in the number of processing cores. It seems that players who do not want to update their LGA1155 systems are somewhat right. They won't even get close to gaining as much content creators as content creators.

The difference in the results is quite weak, the overall situation is as follows.

It turns out that 4K players - owners of Core i7-4790K and later processors - have nothing to worry about now. Until a new generation of graphics accelerators comes to the market, with a gaming load at ultra-high resolutions, such CPUs will not turn out to be a bottleneck, and the performance is completely limited by the video card. A processor upgrade may make sense only for systems equipped with Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge retroprocessors, but even in this case, the increase in frame rate will not exceed 6-9 percent.

⇡ Power Consumption

It would be interesting to supplement performance tests with energy consumption measurements. Over the past seven years, Intel has changed technology standards twice and six times - the declared scope of the thermal package. In addition, the Haswell and Broadwell processors, unlike the others, used a fundamentally different power scheme and were equipped with an integrated voltage converter. All this, naturally, somehow influenced real consumption.

The Corsair RM850i ​​digital power supply we used in the test system allows us to control the consumed and output electrical power, which we use for measurements. The graph below shows the total system consumption (without monitor) measured "after" the power supply, which is the sum of the power consumption of all components involved in the system. The efficiency of the power supply itself is not taken into account in this case.

In the idle state, the situation fundamentally changed with the introduction of the Broadwell design, when Intel switched to a 14nm process technology and introduced deeper energy-saving modes into circulation.

When rendering, it turns out that the increase in the number of processing cores in Coffee Lake has a significant impact on its power consumption. This processor has become significantly more voracious than its predecessors. The most economical representatives of the Core i7 series are the carriers of the Broadwell and Ivy Bridge microarchitectures, which is quite consistent with the TDP characteristics that Intel declares for them.

Interestingly, at the highest loads, the consumption of the Core i7-8700K is similar to that of the Devil's Canyon processor and does not seem so outrageous any more. But in general, the energy appetites of Core i7 processors of different generations differ very noticeably, and more modern CPU models do not always become more economical than their predecessors. A big step in improving the characteristics of consumption and heat dissipation was made in the Ivy Bridge generation, in addition, Kaby Lake is not bad in this regard. Now, however, it seems that improving the energy efficiency of flagship desktop processors is no longer an important task for Intel.

Addition: performance at the same clock frequency

Comparative testing of mass Core i7 processors of different generations can be interesting even if all participants are brought to a single clock frequency. Often, the performance of newer representatives is higher due to the fact that Intel increases the clock frequencies in them. Tests at the same frequency make it possible to isolate the extensive frequency component from the overall result, which depends on the microarchitecture only indirectly, and to focus on the issues of “intensification”.

Performance measured without regard to clock frequencies may be of interest to enthusiasts who operate CPUs outside the nominal modes, at frequencies that are very different from the nominal values. Guided by these considerations, we decided to add an additional discipline to the practical comparison - tests of all processors at the same frequency of 4.5 GHz. This frequency value was chosen based on the fact that it is not difficult to overclock almost any Intel processor of the last years of release to it. Only a representative of the Broadwell generation had to be excluded from such a comparison, since the overclocking potential of the Core i7-5775C is extremely limited and one could not even dream of taking the 4.5 GHz frequency. The other six processors went through another test cycle.

Even if we disregard the fact that the frequencies of Intel processors are growing at least slowly, the Core i7 with each new generation is getting better only due to structural changes and optimizations in the microarchitecture. Judging by the performance in applications for creating and processing digital content, we can conclude that the average increase in specific productivity at each stage is about 15 percent.

However, in games in which the optimization of the program code for modern microarchitectures occurs with a large lag, the situation with the increase in performance is somewhat different:

The games clearly show how the development of Intel microarchitectures stopped at the Skylake generation, and even an increase in the number of computing cores in Coffee Lake does little to increase gaming performance.

Of course, the lack of growth in specific gaming performance does not mean that newer Core i7s are uninteresting for gamers. In the end, keep in mind that the above results are for frame rates for CPUs running at the same clock speed, and newer processors not only have higher nominal frequencies, but also overclock much better than the old ones. This means that overclockers may be interested in switching to Coffee Lake not because of its microarchitecture, which has remained unchanged since Skylake, and not because of six cores, which give a minimum increase in speed in games, but for another reason. - thanks to overclocking capabilities. In particular, taking the 5-gigahertz line for Coffee Lake is quite a feasible task, which cannot be said about its predecessors.

⇡ Conclusion

It so happened that it is customary to criticize Intel for the strategy of a measured and unhurried implementation of improvements to the core architecture, which has been chosen in recent years, which gives a not too noticeable increase in performance when moving to each next generation of CPUs. However, detailed testing shows that, in general, real performance does not grow at such a sluggish pace. You just need to consider two points. First, many of the improvements added to new processors do not reveal themselves immediately, but only after some time, when the software acquires appropriate optimizations. Secondly, albeit small, but a gradual improvement in productivity that occurs every year, in total, gives a very significant effect if we consider the situation in the context of longer time periods.

In confirmation, it is enough to cite one very indicative fact: the newest Core i7-8700K is more than twice as fast as its predecessor from 2011. And even if we compare the new product with the Core i7-4790K processor, which was released in 2014, it turns out that in four years the performance has managed to grow at least one and a half times.

However, you need to understand that the above growth rates relate to resource-intensive applications for creating and processing digital content. And this is where the watershed ends: professional users who use their systems for work reap far greater dividends from improving processors than those who use a computer purely for entertainment. And while for content creators, frequent platform and processor upgrades are more than a meaningful step to increase productivity, the conversation about gamers is completely different.

Gaming is a very conservative industry that reacts very slowly to any changes in processor architecture. In addition, gaming performance is more dependent on the performance of graphics cards, not processors. Therefore, it turns out that users of gaming systems see the development of Intel CPUs that has taken place in recent years in a completely different way. Where the "pros" report a twofold increase in performance, gamers get, at best, only a 35% increase in fps. And this means that there is practically no point for them in pursuit of new generations of Intel CPUs. Even the older Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge series processors have enough power to unleash the potential of a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti-class graphics card.

Thus, while the players in the new processors may be attracted not so much by the increase in performance as by the new opportunities. They can be some additional functions that appear in new platforms, for example, support for high-speed drives. Or the best overclocking potential, the limits of which, despite Intel's problems with mastering new technological processes, are still gradually being pushed to more distant frontiers. However, in order for the players to receive a clear and understandable signal for modernization, first of all, there must be a noticeable increase in the speed of gaming GPUs. Until then, even the owners of Intel CPUs seven years ago will continue to feel themselves completely not deprived of processor performance.

Nevertheless, this situation is quite capable of changing the processors of the Coffee Lake generation. The increase in the number of computing cores that has occurred in them (up to six, and in the future up to eight pieces) carries a powerful emotional charge. Due to this, the Core i7-8700K seems to be a very successful upgrade for almost any PC user, because many think that six-cores, due to the potential inherent in them, can remain a relevant option for a longer period. Whether this is really so is hard to say now. But, summing up all of the above, we can confirm that upgrading the system with the transition to Coffee Lake in any case makes much more sense than the upgrade options that the microprocessor giant has offered so far.

Produced on Nehalem, Bloomfield and Gulftown microarchitectures. In this case, the internal clock frequency hovers around 3000 MHz. Integrated graphics are not supported by all models. The data bus frequency usually does not exceed 5 GHz per second.

Some configurations are equipped with unlocked multipliers. In order to learn more about processors, you should consider Intel Processors Core i7 on specific microarchitectures.

CPU on Nehalem microarchitecture

The Core processor has a clock speed of 2.8 GHz. In this case, four cores are provided. The bus frequency of the CPU reaches 2400 MHz. The system can withstand the maximum voltage of 1.4 V. The Intel Core model is released on four cores. It has a clock frequency of 2.53 GHz. The CPU multiplier is of the unlocked type. The main bus frequency hovers around 2400 MHz. The Core i7 2700K is clocked at 2.93 GHz. The specified modification for four cores has an LGA socket. The bus frequency itself does not exceed 2400 MHz.

Bloomfield lineup

The 4720 has four cores. In this case, the chip area is 263 mm 2. The clock speed itself is 2.6 GHz. The Core i7 4730 is configured with four cores. In total, 731 million transistors are involved in it. The CPU clock speed is 2.8 GHz. The Intel modification is rated at 3.07 GHz. In this case, the chip area is 263 mm 2. The bus itself is available at 213 MHz.

CPU on Gulftown microarchitecture

The Core i7 970 model is released by the manufacturer for six cores. Its clock frequency does not exceed 3.2 GHz. The bus is available for the 2660 MHz model. The Core i7 980 is clocked at exactly 3.3 GHz. The chip area in this situation is 239 mm 2. The bus itself is provided at 2660 MHz. The Core i7 990 transistor processor has 1,170 million units. The clock frequency of the model does not exceed 3.4 GHz. The LGA connector is supported in this case.

Main functions

The area of ​​high-speed memory in processors based on the Gulftown microarchitecture is very extensive, so the Intel Core i7 deserves good reviews from the owners. The cache memory is directly related to the architecture. Model kernels are used dynamically. Thus, the system provides high performance. If we consider Intel Core i7 4790, then the IM bus in this case is provided for 5 MHz. It plays an important role in the exchange of information.

The system bus in the processor on the Gulftown microarchitecture is used by CB. It is perfect for transferring data to the controller unit. The interface is provided by the manufacturer with MI support. Direct connection is made through the motherboard. All major operating commands are supported by it.

Performance

An Intel Core i7 laptop is capable of supporting a maximum of four threads. In this case, the base frequency parameter is quite high. An IP program is provided for ordering instructions. Processing the data itself does not take much time. It is also important to note that the clock frequency parameter directly depends on the speed of computational cycles.

The calculated power in Intel processors is specified through a dot. The maximum frequency setting is 38 GHz. Directly the power of the CPU on the Gulftown microarchitecture is at the level of 83 watts. When operating at the base frequency, all cores are used in the processor.

Memory module specifications

The Intel Core i7 CPU on the Gulftown microarchitecture is capable of boasting a lot of memory. In this case, it is supported in various formats. The number of channels directly affects the performance of the system. There are two of them in this modification. It is also important to mention that the Intel CPU supports flex memory.

The throughput is at a very high level. In this case, reading the data does not take much time. This was largely achieved by supporting dual-channel memory. High speed of data storage is another advantage of this system. ECC memory is supported by processors. The standard chipset for this is installed.

Graphics Specifications

On the Gulftown microarchitecture, the graphics frequency parameter is at the level of 350 MHz. In this case, it is also important to consider the render rate. It affects the base frequency quite strongly. Directly the graphics subsystem can significantly increase rendering.

Support for the NS format is provided for Intel models. If we consider the Intel Core i7 2600K, then the maximum system size is 1.7 GB. This metric is very important for interface support. It also affects memory availability. To increase the interaction of a personal computer with a processor, the PPC system is used. Its resolution is 4096 x 2304 pixels.

Direct support

It is important to mention the support of "Direct". In this case, specific collections of application programs are taken into account. "Direct" series 11.1 is great for processing system files. If we talk about the graphic component, then it is important to mention the "Open Graph" system. It affects the computation of tasks quite strongly. In this case, a lot depends on the support for multimedia files.

The Libera system is designed to display two-dimensional graphics. If we talk about the "Quick Video" technology, then in this case you need to take into account the conversion speed. According to experts, the system interacts normally with portable media players. Another technology "Quick Video" affects the speed of video editing. In addition, it provides the placement of important information on the safety of work on the Web. It is very easy to create videos with this technology.

Expansion options

The Intel Core i7 computer uses the Express edition for data transfer. Today there are many versions of it, which, in fact, are not very different. However, in general, the Express edition is very important when it comes to connecting various devices to a personal computer.

If we talk about version 1.16, then it is able to significantly increase the data transfer speed. The specified system can work only with devices of the PC type. Directly channels, it allows you to play up to 16. In this case, the basic modulator of the central processor is not involved in data processing.

Data Protection Technology

This technology allows you to work with the AE system, which is a set of commands. Due to it, you can quickly perform data encryption. In this case, the process is safe. The AE system is also used to decrypt the data. The set of tools of the program allows you to solve a wide range of tasks. In particular, the AE system is capable of working with cryptographic data. It solves problems with applications pretty quickly.

The "Data Project" technology itself was created to decrypt random numbers. Authentication is carried out through them. Additionally, it should be noted that the "Data Project" technology includes the "Key" system. It is designed to generate random numbers. It helps a lot in creating unique combinations. Also, the Kay system is involved in decoding algorithms. It works well for enhancing data encryption.

Platform Protection Technology

The technology "Platforms Protection" at the CPU "Intel" is provided for series 10.1. Speaking about it, first of all it is important to mention the "Guard" system. It was created for safe work with various applications. In this case, various operations can be performed with them.

The "Guard" system is also used to connect microcircuits. The Trusted program is used directly to protect platforms. It allows you to work with a digital office. The measurable launch function is supported by Platform Protection technology.

Also available is the option of secure command execution. In particular, the system is able to isolate some threads. At the same time, running applications do not affect them. The Anti-Tef system is used to cancel hardware programs. In this case, the CPU vulnerability is greatly reduced. The Anti-Tef system is also designed to fight against malicious software.