The Intel Haswell CPU Update

Haswell’s launch is a little disappointing, even though it does bring a small improvement to performance. When it comes to CPUs, we are a greedy lot, but Intel made us that way. When Intel launched Nehalem (the first gen i7), the performance improvement over its predecessor was roughly 20%-30%.

This was repeated with Sandy Bridge (second gen), which brought an improvement of roughly 25%. Ivy Bridge (third gen) did not maintain the pace, offering only a small ~5% improvement, but we forgave that, since it was just a die-shrink. Haswell was supposed to bring back the excellent OC-ability of SB, and also bring excellent improvements to performance as well as power consumption.

What We’re Waiting For, Part 4: Haswell

Haswell is Intel’s latest CPU offering, based on the same 22nm process as Ivy Bridge, but with an improved architecture for better performance. It is supposed to be ready in just a couple of months, and rumour has it that it is already shipping to OEMs.

What We Are Waiting For, Part 3: Chromebook Pixel

It is real! When it was first revealed, it was quickly dismissed as a rumour, but Google proved us wrong. The Chrome Pixel is a laptop that runs Chrome OS, a glorified browser. While previous Chromebooks have been low-to-modest quality $200-$300 machines, the Pixel distinguishes itself as a very high-end affair, with a best-in-class screen.

What We Are Waiting For, Part 2: AMD Richland

AMD Richland (Expected 19th March, 2013)

Product: APU (CPU with a good iGPU)

Expected price: No data, but probably $60-$120 range, based on Llano and Trinity prices

What We Are Waiting For, Part 1: GX700

Often, people wonder if buying whatever it is that they want is a good idea now, or if there is something new just around the corner. Our philosophy is to buy whatever is good now, and not wait. The only exception is if there is a confirmed product with a confirmed release date and a confirmed price that is better than current options and fits your budget and needs… with so many constraints, that rarely happens.

Intel’s i7-3770K vs. the i7-3820

i7-3770K vs i7-3820

Bigger numbers are always better, right?

The 7970 is bigger than the 7870, and it is better. 8GB of RAM is bigger than 1GB, and it is better. Naturally, one would expect the i7-3820 to perform better than the i7-3770K, since it is also has a bigger number. Let us take a closer look.

Image: The contenders. Image courtesy of newegg

A Tale of Logical Increments

Greetings, traveler. Sit ye down, have a cup of dark coffee, and hearken to my tale.

I have enjoyed tinkering with technology for as long as I can remember. I roasted my first PC at the age of 12, by playing around with the PSU switch. During my university stay, I assembled several computers for both myself and for my friends, since none of them really cared much about technology: They just wanted to play.

In the early months of 2010, I noticed that many people had a problem getting specific builds for specific budgets. While it is easy to find an answer to “What is the best CPU for $200?” it is not as easy to get “The best build for $800.”

Many people came to /g/ for advice, and I started collecting sample builds from various “build advice” threads. After a few months, it was clear that some items were much more likely to be suggested than others, and some advice (e.g. get a quality PSU) was constantly repeated to people new to PC buying and assembly. I thought it would be nice if /g/’s advice could be compiled into a simple source, so that people could get as much info as needed (for a novice), without having to wait for a nice person to make a build and give advice. This was what prompted me to compile the Logical Increments PC buying guide.

The guide has a list of PC builds, each with a descriptive name, ranging in price from less than USD$300 to over USD$2000. Each tier is slightly better than the one before it, either by having more powerful components, or higher quality components. There is also a list of infoboxes, describing some aspects of each component that you should watch out for when making a purchasing decision. The components selection and advice are compiled from /g/, and from PC-related websites and articles.

/g/’s advice proved to be of extremely high quality, and as a result, the guide received nearly 2 million views, and continues to get several thousand views every month. It is also featured in several websites as a “sticky” for users to refer to, since it answers many questions that novices may ask. /g/ as a whole is knowledgeable, intelligent, resourceful, well-read, and often quite helpful.

Over the last two years, the number of tiers has increased, and the infoboxes increased too. The guide is in .png form, and cannot exceed 5000 pixels, leading to space constraints. An image needs to be hosted, and photobucket has a long URL, and tinyURL was banned on /g/. A .png cannot have links, nor can it have collapsible items. With more requests for more things, it is inevitable that one day the guide moves to a proper site. An exceedingly nice gentleman who wishes to be known as Orion has shouldered the burden of creating the site (design, hosting, testing etc, were all done by him), and we are now ready to transition to a proper website, instead of one static image.

So please do take a moment to let us know if the new layout is to your liking, and if it is not, then tell us how we can improve it. If there are any features you like, let us know too. It is our hope to take all the elements that made the guide good, and expand them further, while still having an easy-to-remember URL.

Thanks for reading!

– The Falcon