Last month, we got our first peek at Intel's new 'Braswell' arrangement-on-fleck solutions in the grade of the Pentium N3700 and Celeron N3050B. These new SoCs used the 14nm process and featured Intel's new Airmont CPU cores. When compared to the visitor's 22nm Silvermont microarchitecture, Braswell promised to exist more efficient - though what really got our attention was the greatly improved 3D performance.

Like Braswell, Broadwell is a 14nm die compress. Broadwell is a derivative of Haswell, which was built using the 22nm process. Naturally, moving to a smaller process results in a smaller die and lower power consumption. All the same, as is frequently the instance with Intel's 'Tick' updates, a few small tweaks have also been applied.

Twelvemonth of release Microarchitecture Tick or Tock Process Node
2015 Broadwell Tick 14nm
2013 Haswell Tock 22nm
2012 Ivy Bridge Tick 22nm
2011 Sandy Bridge Tock 32nm
2010 Westmere Tick 32nm
2008 Nehalem Tock 45nm
2007 Penryn Tick 45nm
2006 Conroe Tock 65nm

The advantage of this minor update is that it is compatible with the existing LGA1150 platform, at least when using an Intel 9-series chipset. It is also possible that Z87 motherboards may support these new processors through a BIOS update.

Our Braswell review touched on the fact that setbacks in developing the 14nm process had delayed the inflow of desktop 'Broadwell' parts, especially the high performance variants - fifty-fifty though the Z97 family unit of boards back up Broadwell processors, the processors themselves accept been missing so far.

Intel officially announced ten new Broadwell processors on June 2, 2022 and, at the time, handed out very limited review samples - sadly, nosotros missed out then. Nosotros were far from the only ones, though, and getting your easily on the at present calendar month-old processor series is still next to impossible as of this writing.

Our sources indicate an early August availability - which is odd, given that Broadwell was announced two months prior. Additionally, Broadwell has already been heavily delayed, then it's surprising that Intel has gone for what appears to be an unorganized soft launch.

Whatever the case, nosotros now know that there are almost a dozen desktop Broadwell CPUs inbound, and today we have the flagship model on hand. Of the 10 new models, five are 65W desktop processors, and 5 are 47W laptop processors.

The New Broadwell Processors

All five desktop Broadwell models are quad-core parts featuring Intel's Iris Pro integrated graphics and the products' associated Crystal Well L4 cache (more on that in a infinitesimal).

Of the five Broadwell 65W desktop processors, only two are LGA1150 socketed parts - the rest are BGA fries soldered directly to the PCB. Unlike Haswell, both the LGA and BGA parts will feature the aforementioned integrated graphics engine.

i7-5775C i7-5775R i5-5675C i5-5675R i5-5575R
Base Frequency three.3GHz 3.3GHz 3.1GHz three.1GHz 2.8GHz
Turbo Frequency 3.7GHz 3.8GHz 3.6GHz three.6GHz 3.3GHz
Cores 4 4 4 4 4
Threads 8 8 4 four 4
Graphics Iris Pro 6200 Iris Pro 6200 Iris Pro 6200 Iris Pro 6200 Iris Pro 6200
EUs 48 48 48 48 48
Graphics Frequency 1150MHz 1150MHz 1100MHz 1100MHz 1050MHz
DRAM Frequency 1600MHz 1600MHz 1600MHz 1600MHz 1600MHz
L3 Enshroud 6MB 6MB 4MB 4MB 4MB
L4 Cache (eDRAM) 128MB 128MB 128MB 128MB 128MB
Interface LGA BGA LGA BGA BGA
Price $366 $348 $276 $265 $244

If we await at the Core i7-5775C, which nosotros have on hand today, and the BGA version (i7-5775R), both chips are most identical. Other than the fact that the Core i7-5775R is a BGA office, the but other deviation is the Turbo frequency which is but 100MHz higher at 3.8GHz. Moving by the specifications, another divergence is the price. Whereas the Cadre i7-5775C features a $366 MSRP the 5775R costs slightly less at $348.

The 2 desktop processors that will likely interest our readers the most are the Core i7-5775C and the Core i5-5675C. The Core i5-5675C is 25% cheaper but forgoes HyperThreading support, reducing the thread count from eight to 4. The base frequency has also been reduced by 200MHz, though just 100MHz separates the Turbo frequencies. Some other big change is the amount of L3 enshroud which has been reduced from 6MB to 4MB.

Information technology is worth noting that the Haswell Cadre i7 parts feature a larger 8MB L3 enshroud, while the Cadre i5 processor received a 6MB L3 cache. It is also worth pointing out that the Cadre i7-5775C and i5-5675C are both unlocked parts, despite not bearing the traditional 'One thousand' designation.

Information technology is especially interesting that the massive L4 Enshroud has its own codename - 'Crystal Well'. Crystal Well is a 128MB eDRAM which was first seen in the Haswell processors featuring the Iris Pro Graphics 5200, predominantly mobile processors.

The problem all integrated graphics confront is bandwidth - they don't have nearly enough of it. Consider an ultra-depression upkeep discrete graphics card such as the Radeon R7 250 for example, which has a memory bandwidth of 73.6GB/due south. In comparison, the Intel Hard disk drive Graphics 4600 of the Core i7-4790K when coupled with DDR3-1600 memory features a measly theoretical peak bandwidth of only 25.6GB/s, roughly a third of the detached card.

Since the eDRAM operates at 1.8GHz on these Broadwell processors, it affords them an extra bi-directional throughput of over 57GB/s (114GB/due south aggregate). Amend withal, the big L4 cache isn't exclusive to the graphics engine, the CPU can also access this enshroud. When a discrete GPU is used, the eDRAM will focus on caching CPU requests, effectively giving Broadwell desktop processors a massive 128MB L4 cache.

Along with the much faster eDRAM cache, Intel has beefed up the Iris Pro 6200 (GT3e) graphics engine to include 48 EUs clocked at 1150MHz, opposed to the 20 EUs used past the Hd Graphics 4600. This means summit gigaflops now sit at 883 GFLOPS for the i7-5775C and 844 GFLOPS for the 5675C, opposed to just 400 GFLOPS for the i7-4790K.