For the past few months many people have been discussing Intel’s brand new 4th Generation Processors, also known as the Haswell microarchitecture. These new CPUs are the successors to the old Ivy Bridge CPUs, that even by today’s standards are still somewhat comparable to the Haswell CPUs. Just like the past three generations, the i3, i5, and i7 Core names have stuck to help differentiate between the cores.
When designing new CPUs the company has a development model that they call the “tick-tock” model. These new Haswell chips are “tock” which translates to mean that the cores have received architectural improvements that changes the CPU’s featured sets and capabilities. “Ticks” on the other hand are a code name for smaller process technologies and any new CPU that is an introduction of new manufacturing techniques.
The new CPUs are enhanced by their 22nm microarchitecture. This is only the second time that Intel has ever developed a 22nm microarchitecture so they needed to hit this right on the head. Just like any other new generation the CPUs come with more performance and better efficiency. With overclocking the CPU reaching that 4GHz mark isn’t as difficult. For the efficiency side the voltage regulator that is typically found on the motherboard has been moved inside the CPU. Also added is better multitasking by having an i7 4-core handling 8-way processing. And here I thought multitasking was already a thing of the past.
Just like the Ivy Bridge CPUs Intel took a little longer to release their i3 edition. When looking online you can only purchase the new i7’s at $319.99 (Newegg) and the i5’s at $229.99 (Newegg).
With Intel owning almost 80% of the market share vs. 20% for AMD (the other main CPU manufacture) it’s safe to say that they understand what they’re doing. Intel has been making these i3, i5 and i7 CPUs for quite a while now, so it’s safe to say that these Haswell CPUs will perform just as well as the last three generations.
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Good update Chief. Your post reminded me of the Haswell-E, the special edition of Intel’s new processor for enthusiasts. Slated to arrive near the 3rd quarter of next year, this processor is rumored to have 20MB of L3 cache and is ready for overclocking. Processors keep do two concurrent trends: getting faster and smaller.
This is amazing to me, as you mentioned above the Haswell CPUs have the new 22nm architecture. I don’t think people realize how small a nanometer is. That’s one billionth of a meter, almost infinitessimal. Atoms and molecules are measured in nanometers. A single hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide, it’s just mind boggling how small these processors are.