On April 29th, Intel released their new generation 3 i5 and i7 SKUs, code-named Ivy Bridge. These build on the excellent performance of generation 2 Sandy Bridge CPUs. The change mainly consists of a die-shrink to 22nm and a different way of etching transistors, as well as an entirely new graphics core. The speed difference over earlier models at the same frequency appears to be about 10%. The major benefit is provided by considerably less power consumption and a much faster graphics core.

We urge you to consider using on-board graphics, unless you are intending to game with the computer.

We’ve relied on Passmark® Software’s (www.cpubenchmark.net) benchmarks for these rankings. The score is to be used as a reference in comparing CPUs. Keep in mind the the software utilizes all cores, so, if the software you are using is not multi-core aware, your performance may not improve as much as the benchmarks would indicate. We’ve included some CPUs in this chart just for reference purposes. Those higlighted in orange are the new Ivy Bridge CPUs.