Daily Reviews Summary 05/31/12

Last month, Intel unleashed its highly anticipated Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. We had been hearing about Ivy Bridge for what seemed like an eternity leading up to the launch, and although not based a totally new design, Ivy Bridge would offer a number of enticing enhancements, like a faster Quick Sync engine, significantly improved integrated graphics, and lower power, thanks to architectural improvements and an advanced 22nm manufacturing process.

We initially took a look at Intel's flagship Ivy Bridge-based processor, the Core i7-3770K. The Core i7-3770K is an unlocked quad-core processor with 8MB of L3 cache; integrated Intel HD 4000 series graphics; and Hyper-Threading, PCI Express 3.0 and Turbo Boost 2.0 support. The processor we'll be showing you today, although also based on Ivy Bridge, is somewhat different. The new Core i5-3470 is based on the same quad-core die as the Core i7-3770, but it's outfitted with less cache, a lower-end graphics core, and lacks support for Hyper-Threading, among other things...

As we will see with the X79-UD3, the same 'bang-per-buck' ethos applies to today's review sample. With top end motherboards rapidly approaching the £500 mark and mid-range boards well in excess of £200 it is great to see GIGABYTE have kept the price below that threshold with the UD3 weighing in at a very reasonable £175, one of the cheapest X79 motherboard available to date. Hopefully GIGABYTE have not trimmed too much fat to achieve this price.

The OCZ Vertex 4 uses the second generation Indilinx Everest 2 platform, set to go head-to-head against the SandForce SF-2281 controller featured in competing SSDs. Vertex in OCZ's SSD language means top of the line, and the drive reviewed today will be OCZ's first Vertex offering in two years to not feature a SandForce controller. OCZ is tossing its Indilinx weight around with the Vertex 4, now see if its a heavyweight in performance through our review.