Intel Launches Ivy Bridge in the Philippines: Welcome the 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors ~Models Inside~

We’ve been scratching our heads over here down at Back2Gaming on when we’ll be getting our hands on an Ivy Bridge chip for the desktop but while that was going down we recently got an invite to Intel’s formal launching of the Ivy Bridge platform.

The launch event, held last June 15 at the Manansala Loft in Rockwell, Makati went on to stress the numerous advancements and improvements found on the new platform. Leighton Phillips, Asia-Pacific Director of Product Management Pricing, also proceeded to present Intel’s heavy investment into the development of Ultrabooks. A mobile computing form factor which Intel deems will adapt to the ever-growing trend in how we use and interact with our devices.

Mr. Philips provides a brief summary of how Intel has come a long way from the old Pentium days. Figures were shown displaying the expected improvements of the Ivy Bridge over the previous generation Core processors. Alongside these performance improvements are features for end-users and businesses to manage and secure their Intel devices as well as assist their basic IT needs with Intel Small Business Advantage. Mobile consumers are also being targeted with SmartConnect and Instant-On technologies that improve the way users interact with their devices by increasing responsiveness and interaction. SmartConnect allows the device to access network data such as email even while the device is in Sleep state. Instant-On complements this responsiveness by allowing the device to wake-up from Standby mode instantly without any waiting time. This technology is aimed to complement the way users expect their smart devices to operate similar to the ever growing smartphone market.

On display were a whole slew of Ultrabooks from MSI, Acer, Dell and a lots of others along with motherboards with the new Z77 chipset ready for the new Ivy Bridge chips from MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, and Foxconn.

We were shown a demo of the new HD4000 on-chip graphics performance with Batman: Arkham City (mistakenly referred to by the presenter Wowie Wong as Arkham Asylum) on a very large screen. Settings were not displayed but I’d assume it was played on very light detail settings. Still, Arkham City looked and played great, the occasional framerate drops were still noticeable from my perspective but the experience was still totally playable. No further details were given aside from the fact that it was running straight from an ultrabook, which, in itself is already considered a pretty impressive feat. Another demo of the Ivy Bridge’s performance was sampled with an encoding test using Media Espresso between the Gulftown 6-core Core i7 980X, an LGA1366 former flagship model of Intel, backed by an nVidia Geforce GTX580 and a Dell XPS13 Ultrabook packing an Ivy Bridge Core i7.

We had a little Q&A with Leighton Philips and Wowie Wong and some of the questions asked by the guests were Intel’s naming scheme of the Core series as well as their improvements on their graphics technology. I would’ve loved to asked if Intel was concerned about stepping on nVidia’s and AMD’s foot with a discrete graphics solution from Intel. Sadly, yours truly wasn’t able to get a moment to inquire about the manufacturing issues surrounding the desktop Ivy Bridge chips and their well-known heating issues. Not so much emphasis were given to gamers’ that night really, even the gaming rig setup the display area wasn’t turned on. And most of the Ultrabooks are just for display.

We would like to thank Intel for letting us be a part of this event and I can’t wait to start tearing through benchmarks with an Ivy Bridge.

(additional reporting and photos by Billy Añonuevo)

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