We were hoping that Intel’s new Core i7 4771 would at least get a new graphics core, but it turns out that the new king of the Haswell desktop hill only gets a small frequency bump.

The graphics core remains the HD 4600, just as well as with the current king Core i7 4770 but the clock speed goes up to 3.5 GHz versus 3.4GHz with the previous version. The TDP remains at 84W, max Turbo stays at 3.9GHz so in real life there will be very little difference between the Core i7 4770 and Core i7 4771. The clock update is a matter of the multiplier getting updated to 35 from the previous 34 setting.

This 8MB cache chip is scheduled to launch in Q3 2013 and it should remain the fastest Haswell desktop part until Q2 2014, when we expect to see the Haswell refresh processors launching.

We are still not sure what the Haswell refresh brings to the game, but we hope to learn more in early September at IDF 2013, where Brian Krzanich is is set to make his IDF debut and deliver his first keynote as CEO.