More than half are made for desktop personal computers, but 17 are for the mobile segment

Apr 15, 2014 06:52 GMT  ·  By

After months of waiting, occasionally sprinkled with leaks and reports about what we can expect, Intel has finally released its new range of central processing units based on the Haswell micro-architecture.

From what we could gather of all those reports, Intel was going to release 25 CPUs this month, or something around that number.

It turns out that we were both right and wrong. Right in that the number of desktop CPUs is 27. Wrong in that there are new CPUs for the mobile front as well, 17 to be exact. The total, thus, is 44.

We'll be looking at the desktop line here. There are no big architectural changes to talk about. Intel has pretty much only released a range of chips that offer a performance advantage over the previous generation.

So the new CPUs will replace the existing lineup with models that are, on average, 100 MHz faster, but priced the same as their predecessors.

As far as stepping stones go (the Haswell refresh is only meant to hold the fort until Broadwell shows up, in late 2014), it's not too shabby.

The best CPU in the lot is the Core i7-4790. It doesn't have an unlocked multiplier (only the ones with a K suffix do), but otherwise it's pretty fast, a quad-core with 3.6 GHz clock, 8 threads (Hyper-Threading technology) and 8 MB L3 cache.

For a chip that costs $303 / €303, it's a decent spec sheet, though you might want to spend some time browsing regardless.

There are three other chips selling for that much after all. For example, the Core i7-4790S, a low-power variant of the 4790 (65W). True, the clock is turned down to 3.2 GHz, but everything else is the same.

There's even an ultra low power version, the 4790T, which works on just 45W, albeit at only 2.7 GHz. It's good for super-HTPCs and LAN Party mini PCs though. Add to that the Core i7-4785T (2.2 GHz) and you have four Core i7 CPUs.

The Pentium and Celeron units (8 in total) all have two cores each, and clock ranging from 2.5 GHz to 3.4 GHz. There are no S-series chips here, but two Pentiums and one Celeron do bear the T suffix. The Pentium CPUs have 3 MB cache, while the Celerons make do with 2 MB. Prices go from $42 / €42 to $86 / €86.

There are five other dual-core units, the Core i3-Series, all of which have Hyper-Threading (the Celeron and Pentium don't) and either 4 MB or 3 MB cache memory. They sell for $117 / €117 to $149 / €149.

That leaves the Core i5 processors, which number 10 and all have 4 cores and 4 threads (no Hyper-Threading), 1.9 GHz to 3.5 GHz clocks, 6 MB L3 cache, and prices of $182 - $213 / €182 - €213.

Keep in mind that while Intel has begun to ship these Haswell chips, retailers and OEMs are the only ones getting them. We consumers probably have to wait until May, by which point some new 9-series motherboards will come out as well.

Intel Haswell refresh desktop CPUs
Intel Haswell refresh desktop CPUs

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Intel releases Haswell refresh CPUs
Intel Haswell refresh desktop CPUs
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