Editor Note: Intel or GIGABYTE did not sanction this preview in any way. We are posting this well ahead of launch since some other well-known tech sites have already covered Ivy Bridge performance and the CPU is readily available and for sale right now.

Introduction

I literally feel like a zombie right now. In the last 48 hours I've done so much testing it passes the threshold of being funny. I'm almost at the point where I wish I could just write "blah blah blah" let the pictures do the talking. As tempting as that is, though, I wouldn't and will instead get a bit of an introduction out for you right now.

I only say a bit of an introduction out because to be honest, we don't have to do that much talking about what's going on here today. Over the last few days we've taken the chance to preview the upcoming Ivy Bridge platform in the following ways.

We started off with a look at the upcoming Intel i5 3570k and then followed that up with a look at the upcoming Intel i7 3770k. If that wasn't enough to get your taste buds tingling then the Ivy Bridge High-Speed RAM Run with G.Skill PC3-20800 2666MHz RipjawsZ should've sealed the deal.

But something was missing! Overclocking results on the new processors and a look at just how performance goes when we overclock them. Because we've covered the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H already along with both processors there's not a real need to go into too much detail again. Instead we'll just get into the testbed side of things and cover how we went with overclocking.

Once we've done that it's simply a matter of getting into the benchmarks and seeing just what kind of performance is on offer from the upcoming chips that are set to be released next month. So without any further ado, let's just get into it and see what exactly is going on.