KitGuru Annual Awards 2013

Much has been written about Haswell and KitGuru's voice was in the majority when it launched.

Despite a lot of work in the KitGuru Labs we finally had to concede that the new processor was not a quantum leap forward from Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.

Maybe it is an inevitable consequence of an increasing transistor count combined with a shrinking process … alongside an ever larger amount of processor space being given over to graphics – but the overclocking expectations from Haswell were simply not realised.

That said, most of the local system manufacturers like PC Specialist, MESH and YOYOTech moved across to the 4670K and 4770K pretty quickly – but we cant say that these Intel chips at the best of the year, overall.

To be crowned ‘King of Kings' – at the head of all tables – in technology terms, needs something a little special.

Let's face it, most people are not going to spend more than £800 on a CPU alone. That's enough for 8 cheap tablets or two low end PCs – complete with Windows and monitors. Choosing a chip for that kind of money means you have a specific requirement – probably in the digital content creation area.

But if you DO have that requirement – then the Intel Core i7 4960X delivers in buckets.

The benchmark here is Cinebench, which gives you a good idea of how a processor will perform in a rendering environment – when a serious workload needs to be completed. That's exactly where the 6-core, 12-thread architecture comes into its own.

If you're a serious gamer, then you can achieve very similar in-game results with an overclocked Core i7 4770K – but if you're into content creation/rendering at a professional level, this this processor will begin to repay your investment as soon as you start using it.

It is around 40% faster at serious rendering than a 4770 and, if you are invoicing customers for your rendering/creative time, then that is all you need to know.

Read our review, over here.

Best processor of the year, in a money-no-object situation, is the Intel Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition.

Buy from Overclockers UK, from this link.

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