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[JustinChase]

It uses the HD Graphics 4000, like the i7, but it's a bit slower.  It's also $120 or 34% cheaper than the i7-3770k chip.

I would rather save the money, but don't want to shoot myself in the future foot by 'compromising' now.

I want to remove my nVidia 550Ti from the machine altogether, and use only the HD 4000 for all graphics processing.  nVidia has NOT impressed me.  Their drivers have been questionable at best, and I keep getting momentary black screens when the graphics system is loaded.

This was my first nVidia card in at least a dozen years, and will be my last for a while, based on my experience so far.

Anyone have any experience with the i5, or can confirm I can use ROHQ without compromise with this processor/graphics chip?

How about 4K video, can it handle this fine?

I'm not planning any gaming with this machine, so that's not a concern to me.

Thanks.

[locust]

I was just going to ask the same question, I want to build a htpc and not needing a graphics card would shave off quite a bit from the price tag..

I don't play any games so I'm not bothered about it being future proofed for gaming. I hope it can run ROHQ smoothly

[glynor]

There's no reason to consider a K series chip if you don't plan to overclock.  The non-K series versions are effectively the same without the unlocked multiplier, and they're cheaper.

The i5-3570K and non-K are identical other than the unlocked multiplier.  Of course, the cost of that unlocked multiplier is a scant $15 on Newegg right now.

The i7-3770K and non-K are also different in that the K-series version has a 100MHz speed advantage at base (3.5GHz vs 3.4GHz), but their default turbo core frequencies are the same (3.9GHz).  Ivy Bridge CPUs don't spend much time at that base clock though, so that's not as much of an advantage as it may seem.  And, even if it were, you're talking a 2.8% difference.  In real world, they're close to identical at stock speeds at most tasks.  But the difference in price there is double, $30.

The i5-3570 is a very good chip.  It is quad-core, and runs at a 3.4GHz base (3.8GHz turbo).  It is the same silicon as the 3770.  It is just binned differently, has some L3 cache disabled, and has one feature disabled for market purposes.  It has the same base clock as the i7-3770, and a slightly lower rated turbo core.  The main difference between the two is Hyperthreading.  The 3770 shows up to Windows as an 8-core CPU.  The advantage this gives varies, but it is now far better than it was in the old Pentium 4 days.  Heavily threaded applications often (but not always) see the most benefit.  According to most benchmarks I've seen, it runs around a 8-15% advantage, depending on the workload, with a few extremely high and low outliers (some applications don't benefit at all, some run way better with hyperthreading).  There is also a small cache difference, but other than running a MySQL database and similar applications (and a few games) this has a very modest general performance impact on the order of 1-3%.  MC may benefit from it somewhat due to the database back end, but you'd need to test it to know for sure.

Their graphics cores are identical.

So, bumping up to the 3770K would gain you a 15-20% performance advantage, best case, over the vanilla 3570.  The difference between the two non-K variants would be more like 10-15%, best case.

If you don't mind overclocking, the i5-3570K is a great value.  You can certainly make up for that performance deficit with modest bumps to the multiplier.  If you don't plan to overclock, I'd compare the two non-K variants, and decide which matters more to you: a nice performance bump in some applications, a modest one in others, or $100.

[JustinChase]

Thanks for the thorough explanation, with stats.  Very helpful.

Their graphics cores are identical.

According to newegg, this isn't correct.

They list them this way...

Intel Core i5-3570 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637i53570

and

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

I was hoping/figuring that it would be enough, and didn't think this forum would see too much traffic, and generate much of a response, so I decided to save the $120 and pulled the trigger on the i5-3570K tonight.

Mainly because the motherboard and memory are on sale, so I decided to take the chance and do my own testing when it arrives.  I've been sort of following the Intel QuickSync Decoder progress by egur in the LAV filters thread, and it seems like I've got a good chance of everything working okay with that decoder.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442&highlight=Intel+QuickSync+Decoder

I ordered up some good memory to pair with it, so hopefully it will work fine. 

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133 SDRAM (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory

I'll post an update once I get it built and running.  Hopefully next week.

[locust]

Looking forward to the update.

I was originally going to go for the Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge but depending on your update I may opt for the Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge.

That should definetaly run ROHQ smoothly without a graphics card, shouldn't it?

is there much difference between the Intel Core i5-3570K & Intel Core i7-3770? Worth the extra money?

[glynor]

Intel Core i5-3570 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637i53570

and

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

Ahh, crap.  I admit, I only looked at the GPU for the 3570K before I posted.  I was getting mixed up.

But, the difference in price between the vanilla 3570 and the 3570K is only $15.  With that difference in mind, it is a no-brainer.  So, the choice would be between the 3570K and the 3770 if you aren't going to overclock.  If you are, then I think the 3570K is the best value, unless you have more money than sense.

That memory will be nice.  You see actually almost ZERO tangible performance benefit with going above DDR3-1600 on Ivy, so you might have wasted a bit there, but it'll still be nice RAM.  I run G-Skill RAM in ALL of my machines at home now, and my Macbook Pro too, to boot.

Don't run the RAM at higher voltages to get those clocks though.  It isn't worth it, and can damage your CPU (I'm pretty sure that's what happened to my Core i5-750).  Stick with whatever they'll do at 1.5v.

[glynor]

is there much difference between the Intel Core i5-3570K & Intel Core i7-3770? Worth the extra money?

I explained it in detail above.  The only thing I was wrong about was the GPU in the "vanilla" 3570.  That has the crappier integrated GPU, so don't get that.

The choice is between the 3570K and the 3770.  If you want to overclock and try to really push it, then maybe the 3770K, but it almost certainly isn't worth the cost even then.

[JustinChase]

I just hope the HD4000 is enough to drive madVR without issues.

I figure the higher bandwith on the memory gives me good overhead to keep everything at stock, and it was about the same price as the DDR3 1600, since I got 15% off, so I figured 'better to have and not need...'

I went with the ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Motherboard.  It looks decent and enough for my needs, and was $40 less than the ASUS I was considering.

I'm hoping this is enough to handle all my media decoding (and maybe encoding) needs for several years.  If not, I guess it's easy enough to put another video card in, but it won't be the Galaxy GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16.  I can't figure out what else is causing all the little blackouts, but I strongly suspect nVidia in all this.

Anyway, the new machine will only share the SSD (which I'll wipe clean), optical drive, power supply, tuner card & case; none of which should/can contribute to the blackouts, so I'm hoping for a better experience.

Time will tell.

[pcstockton]

My i5 2520M, HD3000 Sandy Bridge runs ROHQ without issue.  BluRays look great and work wonderfully.  Assuming the higher the number the better, HD4000 should be just fine.

[JustinChase]

Yes, the 4000 is the step above the 3000, so i expect great things, but, the author of the QuickSync Decoder had this to say, after IvyBridge was released...

Under the right conditions, MadVR can provide better quality than MSDK VPP.
Under different conditions, it might stall.
If you care about subtitles or you're unhappy (for any reason) from the way MadVR handles DI, then MSDK VPP is a good option.

Given the low power budget the iGPU have together with the fact that it costs nothing (to the user), you can't seriously expect it to beat a 150W GPU on every turf...
Future iGPUs will be stronger and stronger, at some point MadVR will be able to run smoothly using it's (today's) highest settings. When will this happen? Don't know.
__________________
Eric Gur, Processor Client Application Engineer
Intel QuickSync Decoder author

We shall see

[glynor]

I went with the ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Motherboard.  It looks decent and enough for my needs, and was $40 less than the ASUS I was considering.

That'll be a very nice board.

Should be a great little system.  What case are you putting it in?

PS.  The PSU could be the culprit.  Probably not, but still.  I've had TONS of trouble with power supplies leading to all manner of weird issues over the years.  Get one of these.

[locust]

im not too bothered about overclocking but if I get the i5 I might as well but as the the i7 im not too bothered

what do you think about these prospective system specs?

ps sorry JustinChase for semi-hijacking your thread.

Asus P8Z77-V LX Motherboard (Or Perhaps Asus P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard, a little more expensive but i don't know if it is really needed)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler
Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 8GB 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory
Cooler Master RS650-ACAAE3-UK GX-Series 650W 80 Plus Power
Intel 3rd Generation Core i7-3770 CPU  (or perhaps Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K CPU, although I am unsure I want the system to be a decent system for at least a few years)

[JustinChase]

It's all going into this SILVERSTONE GRANDIA GD04B Black 8.0mm aluminum front panel, Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163158, which seems to be out of stock now.  I REALLY like this case.  2 USB connectors on the front, one for the bluetooth, which I need in front because of the limited range I get if plugged in the back, and one for the receiver for the remote.  One CD tray for the discs, and one power and one reset button.  Nothing else to distract, or take away from the clean front.  It's been great.

The power supply is a new, single rail 600W (I think) PS I installed a few months ago, to replace the otherwise good Antec I had in there.  This was an attempt to fix the blackouts, but it didn't have any effect, so I've ruled out the PS as a culprit.  Yeah, it could be, but very unlikely at this point.

With my AVerMedia AVerTV HD Duet TV card, which has worked flawlessly since install 2-3 years ago.

Fingers crossed!

[JustinChase]

im not too bothered about overclocking but if I get the i5 I might as well but as the the i7 im not too bothered

what do you think about these prospective system specs?

ps sorry JustinChase for semi-hijacking your thread.

Asus P8Z77-V LX Motherboard (Or Perhaps Asus P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard, a little more expensive but i don't know if it is really needed)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler
Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 8GB 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory
Cooler Master RS650-ACAAE3-UK GX-Series 650W 80 Plus Power
Intel 3rd Generation Core i7-3770 CPU  (or perhaps Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K CPU, although I am unsure I want the system to be a decent system for at least a few years)

The P8Z77-M Pro is the one I almost bought, but the ASRock I just bought seems to have most/all the same specs, except maybe the power management stuff on the ASUS.  I would compare them and see if it's worth the extra money.

the memory looks good, I wouldn't get any slower, and if you can find a bit faster for the same money (on sale), it might be worth it, just to future-proof a bit.

I would definitely get a processor with the HD4000, which means Core i5-3570K, or an i7.  I don't know if an HD3000 will be enough for madVR, and I know that IvyBridge is able to take better advantage of the QS decoder, so I wouldn't try to save money with less than that.

Of course your needs may not match mine, but I am hopeful I don't need/want to muck with this HTPC for at least a few years, hopefully 5-8+

If you're not going to overclock, I'm not sure I'd put a different cooler on there, the stock one should be okay.  But, your choice

[hulkss]

I have two machines, one with a i5 3570K and one with a i7 3770K. I do my video transcoding in the 3770K, hyperthreading speeds up the process. When running Red october HQ with no graphics card there is no difference. Windows 7 keeps the hyperthreaded cores parked in the i7 as they are not needed. CPU usage is less than 15%. The video is great with either.

[JustinChase]

...one with a i5 3570K and one with a i7 3770K... When running Red October HQ with no graphics card there is no difference... CPU usage is less than 15%. The video is great with either.

Thank you; I'm hoping for a similar experience 

[glynor]

The P8Z77-M Pro is the one I almost bought, but the ASRock I just bought seems to have most/all the same specs, except maybe the power management stuff on the ASUS.  I would compare them and see if it's worth the extra money.

The ASUS EFI implementation is better.  But the ASRock isn't bad, I hear.  I don't know for sure as I haven't used it.  I'm very happy with my ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe board.

the memory looks good, I wouldn't get any slower, and if you can find a bit faster for the same money (on sale), it might be worth it, just to future-proof a bit.

That memory is good.  It is rated for 1600 at 9-9-9-24 at 1.5v.

Now that you can't overclock by raising the base clock (easily or much, especially on Ivy), you don't have to worry about memory dividers and whatnot, so faster RAM yields very small returns.  From Anand's DDR3 Scaling article:

I think we confirmed what we pretty much knew all along: Sandy Bridge's improved memory controller has all but eliminated the need for extreme memory bandwidth, at least for this architecture. It's only when you get down to DDR3-1333 that you see a minor performance penalty. The sweet spot appears to be at DDR3-1600, where you will see a minor performance increase over DDR3-1333 with only a slight increase in cost. The performance increase gained by going up to DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 isn't nearly as pronounced.

As a corollary, we've seen that some applications do react differently to higher memory speeds than others. The compression and video encoding tests benefited the most from the increased memory bandwidth while the overall synthetic benchmark and 3D rendering test did not. If your primary concern is gaming, you’ll want to consider investing in more GPU power instead of a faster system memory; likewise, a faster CPU will be far more useful than more memory performance for most applications. Outside of chasing ORB chart placement, memory is one of the components least likely to play a significant role in performance.

We also found that memory bandwidth does scale with CPU clock speed; however, it still doesn't translate into any meaningful real-world performance. The sweet spot still appears to be DDR3-1600. All of the extra performance gained by overclocking almost certainly comes from the CPU overclock itself and not from the extra memory bandwidth.

Ivy Bridge is the same architecture, and did not change this.  It won't change in that system's lifetime.  It might make a difference with Haswell, but you'll need a whole new motherboard for that, and RAM is cheap.  By then, for the capacity, it'll be cheaper still.  Besides, we don't know what the sweet spot for Haswell will be, or if Intel will change the required voltage again or anything, so you could end up needing new RAM anyway.  It isn't worth the money to go over DDR-1600.  Not to say it doesn't do anything, but don't pay extra.  If it is the same, then... Meh.  They're binned better, and maybe (probably not) are a tiny bit less prone to errors, or might last longer.  Of course, a cosmic ray could still get you, so who knows.

1600 at 9-9-9-24 at 1.5v is good DDR3.

[JustinChase]

So, I got it all put together last night, and windows installed, along with LOTS of drivers.  Mostly fine, but some video issues still, which makes me sad.

I posted basically this in the QuickSync Decoder post on Doom9 also.

I installed everything fine, installed windows 7x64, then installed the VGA driver from the manufacturer, then installed the latest version from Intel's download center on top of that. (QuickSync Win7_64_15.26.12.64.2761)

Everything is basically fine, and windows displays fine. However, I'm sending to a DLP TV, which has overscan, so I can't see the taskbar, or start button, nor the minimize/maximize boxes in the upper right of maximized windows. TV offers no way to compensate, so it must be done at the PC.

So, I did some poking around and see that custom resolutions lets you use a slider to get reduced resolutions.

It took some 'trickery' to get it to finally let me use the custom resolution (1812 x 1020), but once I got it enabled, the desktop displayed fine.  When I opened Media Center to a window, all was still fine. However, when I set it to Theater View, I could still hear sound, but only got a black screen. I hit ctl-f4 to close the program, but the desktop did not return, just the black screen.  Same behavior in Windows Media Center, so it's driver/video related, not software related, IMO.

I turned off the AVR, and the desktop came back, but at a different resolution (1680 x 1050). My custom resolution wasn't available any more from the list of resolutions. When I turned the AVR on again, the resolution went back to my custom resolution.

I tried going back to the full 1920 x 1080 resolution, and everything works.

I uninstalled that driver, and installed the previous one (15.26.8.64.2696), and nothing changed. All behavior was the same.

So, I can run in 1920 x 1080 and fumble around for the toolbar and controls (which are almost 90% cutoff across the top also) and hear sound with video; or I get a desktop I can use, and only video or sound, but not both

[glynor]

Possible Solution Suggestion:

Your motherboard probably has two video outputs (HDMI and DVI, among others).  Get a DVI->HDMI cable, and plug in the TV directly rather than through the AVR.  Then, run the HDMI over to the AVR just for audio.

Annoying, but it'll probably work.  I've read similar reports from others that going directly to an old-school TV via the DVI port was the only way to get the Intel GPU to recognize the TV properly.  Here's one: http://communities.intel.com/message/148719

Alternative Solution:

Buy a real GPU with drivers that don't suck. 

[JustinChase]

hah, not bad advice


I kept playing around, and discovered a solution.  I had been setting the corrected resolution (1812 x 1020) using the underscan slider, then selecting "center" as the scaling choice.  This actually changes the resolution, and was killing the full screen players.

I changed the scaling choice from "Center" to "Customize aspect ratio", which let me keep the resolution at 1920 x 1080, then I moved the sliders to 56%, hit apply, and my desktop appears correct, but everything sees it as 1080.  I've tried both players, with several videos and some music, and so far so good.  I've tried starting with the AVR off, then turning it on, and turning it off while playing, etc.  I've restarted the HTPC, and so far, I get my desktop all visible, and everything else seems to be working good.