Thanks for the information, I did actually refer to the D3H model by mistake.
Though you may think that the onboard video his not downgraded by using SandyBridge CPU's on IvyBridge MTB, our lab experience shows exactly the opposite. We are an independent lab in Canada and we are part of Intel development members specialising in MTB's chipsets, CPU's and indirectly BIOS technologies. I think you misunderstood what I was saying, sorry but your comment shows that you are well aware of the difference between HD3000 and HD4000. On top of this difference micro-voltage between 32 and 22nm technologies needs to be kept in mind as the first puts an additionnal burden on the second.
We have seen more and more inexplicable problems coming from nowhere since MTB's manufacturers have developped this non sense multiple BIOS revisons. BIOS can only satisfy what the chipset is designed for and sometime refers to voltage control which as an effect on the entire processsing pattern. So, you may solve one single problem you had but will create multiple problems that you might not even notice. This is the reason why you see more MTB with a set of two BIOS. The number of MTB that stopped entirely working after multiple upgrades has been well documented in the industry. Please refer to the numerous studies on this subject made by IDC over the last 20 years.
Without mentionning the manufacturer, we have encountered a serie of MTBs that went haywire after multiple updates to the point of not working at all, disabling some I/O ports or went crazy after replacing a videocard. This kind of discussion is frequent within companies but it seems that being the "first to do something new" is more important then waiting to have a decent BIOS for the chipset. We had under investigation in 2009-10, 3 chipset versions for the same MTB model but manufactured from 2007 to 2009. The oldest of the three went crazy when we upgraded the BIOS with the last version, it was not the first time and is not the last.
You may have seen participants in this blog saying that they needed to revert to the original BIOS version in their quest of solving their problems as they probably pertained to software or driver problems.
Suffice to say that IvyBridge is not an extention of SandyBride on the contrary, SandyBridge is the second and last for the 32nm technology. IvyBridge is the first of the 22nm platform the second will be Haswell which sould be available at the end of 2013. Then a 14nm platform will have the Broadwell and Skylake bridges and finally the 10nm platform with Skymont.
As for the performance of a discrete video card, CPUs under the 22nm (37xx serie) technology are the only one that enables the 3rd generation PCIe videocards, SandyBridge is a 32nm technology and therefore your entire system runs under it's specs. Please refer to AMD site and Nvidia. They are quite clear for all 22nm cards will only performed under the 2nd generation PCIe specs when used on a system with a 32nm CPU (26xx serie) which is half of what 22nm CPUs serie performance (usually marked in red).
As for power supplies, it is becomming more and more difficult to choose the right one as there are two many low quality units on the market. But yours should do the job, I have not checked because I did not have sufficient informations of your system. People looks at voltage specs while they should look at amperage specs.
One other thing you should have a look if the electical headers are not reversed as the ground will not be able to do it's job properly though the button will still work.
Cheers
