Overclocking, Benchmarks, Conclusions
Test Setup:
All tests were run 3 times, then averaged.
Sleeping Dogs was tested with the following settings: high res textures off, shadow resolution normal, shadow filtering normal, SSAO normal, v-sync off, quality motion blur off, fps limiter off, AA normal (FXAA).
Hitman: Absolution was tested with the following settings: no AA, no AF (trilinear), shadows medium, textures normal, reflections medium, LoD medium, DoF medium, SSAO normal, Bloom normal, v-sync off.
F1 2012 and DiRT 3 were both tested on the 'high' preset, individual options were left to the preset default, except AA which was 4x, and v-sync was disabled.
Far Cry 3 was tested with the 'medium' preset, individual options were left to the preset default, again v-sync was disabled.
The A10-5800K OC results were from a previous article. The overclock used here is the combined CPU+GPU+RAM+NB OC.
Overclocking:
Hitting 4.5GHz, for this CPU, was a breeze. Bear in mind this CPU is an engineering sample and may not be representative of retail CPU performance, but judging by the other reviews on the net, and its predecessor Ivy Bridge's overclockability, it seems pretty close to what you can expect. Voltage was set manually at 1.15V, with vdroop set to +5%.
The HD4600 GPU on this chip didn't have a lot of trouble getting to 1600MHz, a nifty 33% overclock. This was achieved with a voltage offset of +100mV.
The ring frequency is almost analogous to AMD's CPU North Bridge, although it runs at the same frequency as the CPU by default. Overclocking this to match the 4.5GHz frequency of the overclocked CPU required a 75mV increase in the ring voltage.
Integrated GPU's from AMD and Intel both suffer from memory bandwidth starvation. A cheap way to unlock GPU performance is to get faster DDR3. It worked for AMD's Trinity APU's, and it works for these Intel processors, as the upcoming tests show.
Sleeping Dogs
Originally developed by Activision as a sequel to True Crime: LA, it was cancelled, then sold to publisher Square Enix. Sleeping Dogs is an open world game, in the style of Grand Theft Auto, but set in Hong Kong.
The GPU and RAM frequency hikes provide pretty much all of the performance gains seen. The CPU and ring overclocks didn't do a great deal to improve performance. AMD's A10-5800K has a clear advantage in this test - its average frame-rate is 40% higher.
F1 2012
F1 2012 is the third iteration of the PC title, following on from the imaginatively titled F1 2010 and F1 2011. Codemasters have been developing their EGO rendering engine for a while now and F1 2012 utilises version 2.0.
Another situation where the RAM and GPU overclock provides the only noticeable gains. Performance in this title is much closer between AMD and Intel, with AMD's minimum and average frame rates just 8% and 12% higher, respectively.
DiRT 3
This rally title uses the same rendering engine as F1 2012, although being rally it is heavier on the particle effects from non-asphalt surfaces.
Strangely, after the competitive showing in F1 2012, the HD4600 GPU really struggles with DiRT 3. The RAM OC barely helps at all, whilst the 33% GPU overclock provides a 33% boost in minimum frame rates. AMD takes this test with a crushing 70% advantage in minimum frame rate, and 60% lead in average frame rate.
Far Cry 3
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Far Cry 3 was a hit with a lot of OCAU members. The game went back to a tropical island setting, like the first Far Cry game, and introduced some wild hallucinogenic elements and extreme characters.
Memory bandwidth appears to be the main performance bottleneck for the HD4600 when rendering this game. The RAM OC alone increased minimum FPS by 41%. Overclocking the various blocks of the 4670K provided less noticeable gains. The A10-5800K has a 20% edge in average frame rate.
Unfortunately, Intel's notoriously problematic 3D graphics drivers resulted in some unpleasant visual artifacts.
  
Thankfully these were solved by updating to the latest available drivers, but it's a little reminder that Intel's driver problems are still a bit of a thorn in their side. Hopefully they can allocate the resources to driver development that their competitors Nvidia and AMD have, else the improved architecture will be somewhat wasted.
Hitman: Absolution
The latest in the Hitman series from publisher Eidos.
This game exhibits similar results to DiRT 3, where raw GPU clock speed does the most to address performance concerns. This title is the closest between AMD and Intel, with AMD's lead cut to just 13% in average frame rate, and a barely perceptable 6% advantage in minimum FPS.
Conclusions:
The Z87 MPOWER motherboard from MSI is a great board for a dedicated overclocker. Aside from over-engineering the board to put up with extreme punishment, quite a bit of thought has gone into what overclockers actually want.
Easy fan control profiles, a highly configurable BIOS, multiple BIOS IC's that are simple to switch between, voltage check points, and a clean socket area to aid insulation installation; these are all features that overclockers at different levels of participation will enjoy.
Lest this article be misconstrued, it is clear from other reviews around the net that Haswell's x86 micro-architecture has extended an already sizeable lead, in outright performance and also performance per watt, across nearly all CPU-constrained scenarios.
As an integrated gaming solution however; in a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) or similar Small Form Factor (SFF) computer, the Intel Core i5 4670K offers questionable value. Currently priced at around $270, in the tests conducted it is pretty soundly beaten by the AMD A10-5800K, which can be found for half the cost, or around $135.
Of course, buying an Intel Core i5 4670K for the x86 cores alone is a choice many will no doubt make, and it's a reasonable choice to make. Overclocking headroom appears to be just as good, if not better than Ivy Bridge. It will be a great chip to power any system, unless you require hardware virtualisation support, or are interested in the new TSX instructions.
So as always, buyer beware! The performance spread of x86 chips has never really been greater, and the best value chip varies depending on the intended workload.
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