3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processor

Our old favourite that sets the standard this new chip will be measured by is the Intel Core i5 2500K from the Sandy Bridge generation, the best all round gaming CPU ever and all the chip most people need.    
Or maybe that should be the Core i5 2550K which was a very minor clockspeed bump over the 2500K. In truth, they're much of a muchness.

At first glance, you might wonder whether the Intel Core i5 3570K is actually a new chip, so similar are the headline specifications to its predecessor

With four cores and no Hyperthreading support, there's not a lot of extra CPU hardware. The clockspeeds and cache haven't budged an inch, either. As before, we're talking 3.4GHz nominal, 3.8GHz Turbo and 6MB of cache.

Dig a little deeper and the differences emerge.

For gamers and performance enthusiasts, the most important upgrade is the shrink from 32nm to 22nm process technology and the introduction of Intel's 3D Tri-gate transistors.

The upshot is what Intel is calling a "Tick-plus".

A "Tick" in Intel-speak means a die shrink of an existing processor architecture, where a "Tock" is a new design using the old manufacturing tech.

So, the existing Core i5 2550K is part of the Sandy Bridge Tock family and the new Intel Core i5 3570K is an Ivy Bridge Tick.