With the release of the 3rd generation processors by Intel, people are asking about their worth. It’s a valid question I agree, and it’s something that I myself have had to ask recently. In my recent frenzy to build the ultimate PC, the issue of Sandy Bridge vs Ivy Bridge arose. I was told to obviously go for the third generation CPU, however the 3930K is the CPU I wanted, and it only came in second generation. My next question was simple, do I wait for the Ivy Bridge 3930K to be released?
Lets start with some basic things to keep in mind. We currently have Sandy Bridge (second generation) Sandy Bridge-E (second generation) and Ivy Bridge (third generation). The whole Sandy Bridge-E throws a spanner in the works of simplicity here. It would be simple if It were just Sandy Bridge and Ivy bridge, but it’s not. So we have to deal with that.

Anyway, I will first of compare Sandy Bridge to Sandy Bridge-E. The latter is a boosted, beefed up version of the original second generation CPU. Originally Sandy Bridge was limited to 4 cores. Then Intel released their E range, allowing up to six cores. This is where my 3930K fits into the equation. I would like some of the features of the 3rd generation processors, however it doesn’t exist for the 3930K, as of yet. I could get the 3770 3rd generation CPU from Intel, however it is just not as powerful as the 3930K Sandy Bridge-E (four cores vs six). When/if Intel release an E version of the Ivy Bridge, I am sure this will outperform the Sandy Bridge-E series. This is what logic would suggest, but we won’t know what the difference will be until it is actually release and directly compared.

So from this we have established that the 3930K (2nd generation 6 core CPU) is more powerful than the 3770K (3rd generation 4 core CPU), simply due to having more cores, not because Sandy Bridge is better than Ivy.

So what advantages do the 3rd generation CPU’s have over Sandy Bridge if you can get better Sandy Bridge CPU?
Well, not much to be honest. Intel’s updates seem more of an ‘evolutionary upgrade’, rather than a ‘revolutionary upgrade’. By this I mean constant small changes that over time amount to a higher level of performance. Let’s go over these new changes.

Ivy Bridge is newer. Plain and simple this one of the differences, didn’t have to mention this, but I did. 

Smaller processing die - Ivy Bridge is 22nm compared to the 32nm Sandy Bridge.

Ivy Bridge supports PCIe 3.0, Sandy Bridge doesn’t. This could seem like a big deal on paper, however not many people (and by that I mean 99.99% of people) never max out PCIe 2.0 as it is. So yes, this is an improvement, however it isn’t an improvement that will cause any noticeable difference in anything other than what you write on paper from benchmarking.

Ivy Bridge supports faster RAM speeds, and also DDR3L (low voltage). 3rd gen CPU’s support up to 2400 speed RAM, whereas on Sandy Bridge you’re looking at speeds maxing at 1600. As with the PCIe upgrade, this is not an issue unless you overclock to the extreme and do benchmarking. Generally speaking 1600 on the Sandy Bridge will suffice.

Power consumption is reduced with Ivy Bridge, this is a pro for anyone who wants to save energy. This change is fairly drastic too, people benchmarking and testing it have recorded drops of around 30 watts when using the new Ivy Bridge CPU’s.

Ivy bridge has better integrated graphics - You may have seen ‘Intel HD Graphics 3000’, well Ivy supports ‘Intel HD Graphics 4000’. This is good for smaller devices such as laptops, however intense gaming still needs dedicated graphics card to pack the punch needed for high end games. This difference makes little impact to large games, but a good increase in lighter graphical work.

Sandy bridge CPU’s will work in Ivy Bridge motherboards. This is good news for anyone who wants to upgrade their system to support Ivy bridge in the future (faster RAM, PCIe 3 slots etc) but only has a Sandy Bridge CPU.

Better general performance in the 3rd generation. If you compare a 3rd gen CPU to it’s counterpart 2nd gen CPU, you are looking at around 10% performance increase. This does not apply to the Sandy Bridge-E CPUs such as the 3930K, however an Ivy Bridge-E (when/if it ever exists) I’m sure would then boost this performance increase too.

So what do you need to buy? Well it comes down to what you want to do really. The Ivy bridge CPU’s are faster, they are more energy efficient, they support newer technologies and have better graphics capabilities. You just can’t get them with 6 cores, yet.

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