Intel Core i5-3470 Performance Analysis

Introducing the Core i5-3470 and New Processors

Introducing the Core i5-3470 and New Processors

Intel’s third generation Core processors are finally here and selling in volume in the retail channels. Codenamed “Ivy Bridge”, these new processors represent the “tick” in Intel’s “tick-tock” strategy, where every “tick” is a shrink in manufacturing process technology used and every “tock” is a completely new microarchitecture. As such, Ivy Bridge is manufactured using the latest 22nm process technology and also boasts a number of other incremental upgrades.

The Ivy Bridge CPUs that were available at launch were all pretty high-end quad-core SKUs such as the Core i7-3770K that we reviewed earlier. Now, Intel is buffing up the Ivy Bridge lineup with six more Core i5 SKUs that are targeted at mainstream users.

The one that we are testing today is the quad-core Core i5-3470. The chip has a base clock speed of 3.2GHz, a maximum turbo frequency of 3.4GHz and comes with a fairly generous 6MB of L3 cache. TDP of the new chip is 77W and price comes in at around US$184. However, the integrated GPU part is the weaker HD Graphics 2500 engine, which differs from the HD Graphics 4000 model with just six execution units instead of 16. In the interest of time, we'll be analyzing the graphics capabilities in a forthcoming article.

Judging from the specifications, the new Core i5-3470 is mostly comparable to the previous generation Core i5-2500 and i5-2400. The new Core i5-3470 has comparable clock speeds to the i5-2500 and i5-2400 and same 6MB L3 cache, but it has an appreciably lower TDP of 77W as opposed to the two Sandy Bridge processors’ 95W. This is achieved thanks to the power optimization features and process technology advancements on Ivy Bridge.

Here's a quick look at the new desktop processors that are launched today: