An Expreview community member ran benchmarks comparing the performance of the Intel HD 4000 graphics embedded into its upcoming 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core i5-3570K, comparing it to the integrated graphics of Core i5-2500K, and discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 240. These tests are endorsed by the site. The suite of benchmarks included games that aren't quite known to be very taxing on graphics hardware by today's standards, yet are extremely popular; games such as StarCraft II, Left4Dead 2, DiRT 3, Street Fighter IV. Some of the slightly more graphics-intensive benchmarks included Far Cry 2 and 3DMark Vantage. All benchmarks were run at 1280 x 720 resolution.

The Intel HD 4000 graphics core beats the HD 3000 hands down, with performance leads as high as 122% in a particular test. The chip produces more than playable frame-rates with Left4Dead 2 and Street Fighter IV, both well above 50 FPS, even DiRT 3 and Far Cry 2 run strictly OK, over 30 FPS. StarCraft II is where it produced under 30 FPS, so the chip might get bogged down in intense battles. A mainstream discrete GeForce or Radeon is a must. On average, the graphics core embedded into the Core i5-3570K was found to be 67.25% faster than the one on the Core i5-2500K.

i7-3770K going from 3.5 GHz to a massive 7.06 GHz clock:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/...-overclock.aspx

Wah! 7GHz! This CPU really can call as beast!

Wah! tat's great! When it will release lah! 

Motherboards based on the Intel Z77 Express chipset are on course for an April 8 launch, even if you won't find compatible 3rd Generation Core processors on shelves, on that day. Here is the first picture of a finished and good-to-go ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard, which will be the company's flagship board based on the Z77 chipset, in its main product line.

Z77 motherboard also can support SB processor?

    * LGA1155 socket for Intel® 3rd/2nd Generation Core™ i7/ i5/ i3/ Pentium® / Celeron® Processors
    * Intel® Z77 Express Chipset
    * Extreme Engine Digi+ II digital power design
    * Dual channel, max. 32GB, DDR3 2666(O.C.) /2600(O.C.) /2400(O.C.) /2200(O.C.) /2133(O.C.) /1866(O.C.) /1600/1333/1066 MHz
    * 2 X PCIe 3.0x16; 1 X PCIe 2.0x4; 1X mini-PCIe 2.0x1 on mPCIe Combo
    * DisplayPort/HDMI port
    * 4 x SATA 6Gb/s; 2 x SATA 3Gb/s; 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s port; 1 x mSATA 3Gb/s on mPCIe Combo™
    * 6 x USB 3.0; 8 x USB 2.0

owikh, the on-boars supremeFX sound vs. xonar dx, which is better?

owikh84, that MSI Z77A-GD65 x3 PCI-E 3.0 is x8 x8 x8?

Another Nice looking Sabertooth Board 
Asus Sabertooth Z77

CAS latency 10???? *SIGH*

when Z77 board will be release ar? April?

Intel Ivy Bridge Revised Launch-Schedule Revealed

Citing issues with the 22 nm manufacturing process, Intel postponed the release of its 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core processor family by as much as 10 weeks. There still seems to exist some confusion surrounding this launch, which SweClockers sought to clear with its latest article containing important dates related to the launch.

8 April, 2012: This was supposed to be the day "everything" (all CPU models slated for April, compatible motherboards) launched. Instead on this day, motherboard vendors will launch their products based on Intel Z77, Z75, H77, and B75 chipsets. System builders (you) will have to use existing "Sandy Bridge" processors, which are very much compatible with those motherboards. You will not be able to buy "Ivy Bridge" processors from anywhere on this day.

29 April, 2012: This is when Intel will launch quad-core Core i5, Core i7 "Ivy Bridge". On this day, the media will be able to post reviews of the new processor platform. It's not clear if you'll be able to buy these chips on this day, either. Perhaps you might.

3 June, 2012: This is when Intel will launch Q77 and Q75 chipset. The notebook platform based on "Ivy Bridge", dual-core "Ivy Bridge" processors, and the much talked about Ultrabook "Ivy Bridge" form-factor are due for "sometime in June".

oo... So the board does not take effect by the delay of ivy bridge la.. This is screwing my upgarde! Have to wait another few week to get ivy!?.. And this words i hate 'perhaps you might'..

## Intel Core 2nd Generation i7 & i5 / i3 ~ Socket LGA1155 ##

GA - G1 SNIPER 3 = RM999 / Z77 Chipset <--- PM For Best Price!
GA - Z77X-D3H  = RM489 / Z77 Chipset
GA - Z77-D3H  = RM435 / Z77 Chipset
GA - Z77P-D3 = RM379 / Z77 Chipset
GA - Z77M-D3H = RM305 / Z77 Chipset
GA - B75M-D3V = RM235

A newly leaked slide on Intel's Ivy Bridge launch schedule has hit the web which puts any previous uncertainty to rest in terms of when exactly the first wave of chips will hit retail.

As also indicated in recent reports, that day does indeed look to be April 29th with a bunch of Core i7 and i5 desktop models hitting retail at this time.

While rival manufacturers flooded CeBIT with their Z77 motherboards, EVGA has been rather low key and only today decided to give us a look at what it's preparing for next's month's Ivy Bridge launch. Seen below is one high-end LGA 1155 board EVGA is currently working on. There's no name to go with the image (best guess is Z77 FTW) but plenty of specs can be identified like, well, the Ivy-ready LGA 1155 socket, four DDR3 memory slots, 10-phase power, two 8-pin power connectors to 'feed' the processor plus two 6-pin PCIe plugs catering to graphics cards, a PCIe bridge chip (likely made by PLX), and five PCI-Express x16 slots (at least two should be PCIe 3.0) providing SLI and CrossFireX capabilities.

EVGA's incoming motherboard also includes PCIe disable switches, a debug LED, an angled 24-pin ATX power connector, four SATA 6.0 Gbps and four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, Gigabit Ethernet, an undetermined number of USB 3.0 ports, Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, 7.1 channel audio, and it seems even a Thunderbolt port. Now where's that 'Like' button?

NVIDIA's Kepler and Intel's Ivy Bridge architectures are a match made in Acer's upcoming VA40 notebook. The notebook combines Intel Core i7-3612QM quad-core processor with NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M discrete graphics, and with NVIDIA Optimus technology, performs dynamic-switching between the GT 640M and Intel HD 4000 graphics embedded into the processor. A Chinese forum user "yknyong1" posted screenshots of the two components using available diagnostic software. We know that CPU-Z 1.6 adds reliable support for Ivy Bridge CPUs, but GPU-Z 0.5.9 has preliminary support for Kepler GPUs, too. At least it knows how to count CUDA cores, ROPs, clock-speeds, and other basic information, even if it gets a few other details inaccurate. Kepler support will be refined and made reliable days ahead of NVIDIA's big launch day, later this month.

The Core i7-3612QM is a quad-core chip clocked at 2.10 GHz, featuring 6 MB L3 cache of the Ivy Bridge silicon, and HyperThreading, which enables 8 logical CPUs. The GeForce GT 640M, on the other hand, is known to be based on NVIDIA's new 28 nm GK107 silicon. It is detected with 384 CUDA cores, 2 GB of DDR3 memory over a 128-bit wide memory interface, 16 ROPs, core clock speed of 405 MHz, and 900 MHz memory. The chip carries a device ID of 10DE-0FD2, and is compliant with PCI-Express 3.0 bus interface. When on light load (desktop), the clock speeds of this GPU were turned down to 135 MHz core with 405 MHz memory. Find more barely-legible screenshots at the source.