First complete review of Haswell i7-4770K

[Unoid]

I feel like i've stated this a million times but AMD is not a motivator to intel whatsoever at this point, because desktop is becoming less relevant by the day. The real threat to intel is ultra portables and the mobile market, and that is the entire reason that intel has spent years trying to make their processors super efficient - intel will _not_ be relevant 10 years from now if they can't make waves in the ultra portable market (tablets, etc). That isn't to say that Haswell won't be used on the desktop / enterprise, but the uarch is designed from the ground up to be efficient. IPC matters much less these days because average consumers don't care, and enterprise cares more about efficiency than they ever have in the past. It is absolutely critical that intel improves efficiency as much as possible.

AMD has little bearing on intel's direction. Actually , scratch that. AMD has no bearing whatsoever on intel's current direction - the threat right now is ARM SOCs. On that note, Haswell is a very positive step in the right direction, as rumors are indicating 12 hours of battery life for their ULV parts. If that is true, intel will definitely create small waves this summer/fall in the mobile market, while next year should be a game changer. ULV Broadwell parts will be that much better than Haswell, and will have even better efficiency than ARM SOCs with significantly better performance.

Blackened keep in mind the analogy: McDonalds still develops, sells, and cares about it's premium line of angus/quarter pounders, even though Mcdoubles and Mcchickens and small $ menu fries far outsell them.

Intel will still care greater about Desktops, It shares the same tech as their server CPU's (excluding itanium)

 

[blackened23]

Blackened keep in mind the analogy: McDonalds still develops, sells, and cares about it's premium line of angus/quarter pounders, even though Mcdoubles and Mcchickens and small $ menu fries far outsell them.

Intel will still care greater about Desktops, It shares the same tech as their server CPU's (excluding itanium)

No, they really won't, not when desktop sales are plunging by double digits quarter after quarter, and the first 3 months of 2013 had the worst sales on record in 2 decades. Meanwhile, ultra portable sales are increasing every quarter by nearly triple digits.

The fact of the matter is that enterprise and server customers care more about efficiency to - it affects their bottom line dramatically. This is precisely why ARM SOC servers are becoming a "thing" now. Intel must be more efficient in every segment, and stating that intel cares the "most" about desktop IPC is just flat-out not true.

Basically, intel is creating the architecture for efficiency - and this will benefit mobile and enterprise the most. Now IPC for desktop isn't increasing as much as some would like, but it's an acceptable compromise considering the state of desktop sales. Obviously with me being a desktop guy, I would love for IPC to increase much more rapidly, but I understand why intel is focused on other things.

 

[blackened23]

I also want to add. If you have difficulty believing anything regarding the state of desktop and intel's focus on mobile - and destroying nvidia, qualcom, TI - read this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...but-it-could-still-win-the-mobile-war/275825/

It goes into detail about intel's missed opportunity with mobile, and how they are completely focused on it (and efficiency) now. They also discuss who their consider their primary competitors: Qualcomm, nvidia, apple, and Samsung. This is intel's focus right now, not desktop IPC. Desktop and AMD are probably somewhere between 40-50 in the grand list of intel's priorities. Dominating all ARM SOC producers are priorities 1-20.

 

[Vesku]

This: http://www.overclock.net/t/1392183/haswell-core-i7-4770k-retail-version-of-the-first-test

Review is more in my realm of expectations.

 

[inf64]

This: http://www.overclock.net/t/1392183/haswell-core-i7-4770k-retail-version-of-the-first-test

Review is more in my realm of expectations.

Basically confirms the 2nd review of retail 4770K. Here we even have SPi 1M numbers, the thing that was missing before. Biggest performance delta is in C11.5(8-10% ,stock-fixed OC) while the rest are much less(~5-6% usually).

iGPU performance varies a lot which is probably due to driver. This will be fixed.

 

[AtenRa]

This will be fixed.

I hope within 2013

 

[ShintaiDK]

16 days till release now. A shame the NDA is not lifted yet, with the broad shop avaliability

 

[frozentundra123456]

No, they really won't, not when desktop sales are plunging by double digits quarter after quarter, and the first 3 months of 2013 had the worst sales on record in 2 decades. Meanwhile, ultra portable sales are increasing every quarter by nearly triple digits.

The fact of the matter is that enterprise and server customers care more about efficiency to - it affects their bottom line dramatically. This is precisely why ARM SOC servers are becoming a "thing" now. Intel must be more efficient in every segment, and stating that intel cares the "most" about desktop IPC is just flat-out not true.

Basically, intel is creating the architecture for efficiency - and this will benefit mobile and enterprise the most. Now IPC for desktop isn't increasing as much as some would like, but it's an acceptable compromise considering the state of desktop sales. Obviously with me being a desktop guy, I would love for IPC to increase much more rapidly, but I understand why intel is focused on other things.

I can understand the emphasis on efficiency, but they could increase clockspeed or make a mainstream hex core.

 

[blackened23]

I can understand the emphasis on efficiency, but they could increase clockspeed or make a mainstream hex core.

There is a mainstream hex-core, you just don't feel like buying it I guess?

 

[Idontcare]

16 days till release now. A shame the NDA is not lifted yet, with the broad shop avaliability

My bet is that they were intending on an early May release and had all the fabs up and running product with that timeline in mind when suddenly they realized they need to slow things down by a month or so to avoid as much of a mobo-recall as possible with the USB3 bug.

Can't stop the fabs like that, so product is available but a bit out of sync with the mobos.

 

[ShintaiDK]

My bet is that they were intending on an early May release and had all the fabs up and running product with that timeline in mind when suddenly they realized they need to slow things down by a month or so to avoid as much of a mobo-recall as possible with the USB3 bug.

Can't stop the fabs like that, so product is available but a bit out of sync with the mobos.

Its always been like this as far as I can remember back. Warehouses stocked with millions of CPUs before release. The last 7 years atleast, you could get retail CPUs 1-2 months before release from various shops.

 

[AtenRa]

There is a mainstream hex-core, you just don't feel like buying it I guess?

I dont know about the US of A but in the rest of the world $500+ is not mainstream

 

[Arachnotronic]

I dont know about the US of A but in the rest of the world $500+ is not mainstream

You want performance/luxury? Pay for it.

 

[R0H1T]

I dont know about the US of A but in the rest of the world $500+ is not mainstream

People demand/ask for a full setup/system at that price in this part of the world

You want performance/luxury? Pay for it.

So performance/luxury = mainstream

 

[ShintaiDK]

I dont know about the US of A but in the rest of the world $500+ is not mainstream

500$ is alot less than most payed for their mainstream K8 X2s. Specially with inflation.

People just tend to want it all, for cheap.

And it doesnt seem people got an issue with 500$ GPUs

 

[frozentundra123456]

There is a mainstream hex-core, you just don't feel like buying it I guess?

If you are talking about the 3930k, I dont consider that mainstream, both because of the price and because it requires a different motherboard.

I really think a 400.00 range hex core would make a good profit and help drive sales to people with Ivy and Sandy quads that feel there is not a reason to upgrade.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If you are talking about the 3930k, I dont consider that mainstream, both because of the price and because it requires a different motherboard.

I really think a 400.00 range hex core would make a good profit and help drive sales to people with Ivy and Sandy quads that feel there is not a reason to upgrade.

Its still a way too low market to create an entire new CPU model and profit from. You only get LGA2011 desktop because Xeons use the same and can carry the cost.

 

[blackened23]

If you are talking about the 3930k, I dont consider that mainstream, both because of the price and because it requires a different motherboard.

I really think a 400.00 range hex core would make a good profit and help drive sales to people with Ivy and Sandy quads that feel there is not a reason to upgrade.

Software that benefits from hexa core is beyond mainstream anyway, so why bother? The average user doesn't need and can't even benefit from hexa core.

 

[SiliconWars]

Have any of you considered the crazy notion that if hexa-cores were mainstream, more software would be written to take advantage of hexa-cores?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Software that benefits from hexa core is beyond mainstream anyway, so why bother? The average user doesn't need and can't even benefit from hexa core.

Granted, it would be a niche market. But even if you left it on the 2011 socket to eliminate making another die, I would think they could make a profit selling at 400.00 since all the development cost is absorbed by the server market. Again, if they made only half the profit per chip vs their current price, but sold 3x the number of chips, they would come out ahead. Not to mention just the status of having a mainstream processor that blows away the competition.

Personally, I dont use any software beyond gaming that would use more than 4 cores, and I dont even play the latest FPS games that utilize the most cpu resources. But the app that comes to mind is encoding.

Edit: I also feel that not making a mainstream hex core was more justified when steady performance gains were being made on the quads. But apparently that has come to an end now, making a stronger case for "moar cores".

 

[CHADBOGA]

Have any of you considered the crazy notion that if hexa-cores were mainstream, more software would be written to take advantage of hexa-cores?

Not in a meaningful way.

Most laptops are dual core and more laptops are sold than desktops.

Leaving that aside, software these days is largely multicore optimised if the nature of the task the software performs, makes it viable.

 

[willomz]

Quite frankly most people still don't buy i7 4C/8T so I can't see why Intel would feel the need to release a cheap hexcore.

There are very very few people who need hexcore and thus the price remains high.

 

[SiliconWars]

Not in a meaningful way.

Most laptops are dual core and more laptops are sold than desktops.

Leaving that aside, software these days is largely multicore optimised if the nature of the task the software performs, makes it viable.

In this case laptops would move up to being tri or quad core, and more software would take advantage of that. There would be power savings from moving to more cores and away from higher clock speeds. Sounds like a win-win.

The sad reality of the situation is that Intel makes more money from smaller chips, so that's what we get - and the software is written for the lowest common denominator.

 

[R0H1T]

In this case laptops would move up to being tri or quad core, and more software would take advantage of that. There would be power savings from moving to more cores and away from higher clock speeds. Sounds like a win-win.

The sad reality of the situation is that Intel makes more money from smaller chips, so that's what we get - and the software is written for the lowest common denominator.

That's playing the volume game but the higher end chips, including enthusiast grade desktop parts, gives them greater margins & the ability to fund next gen R&D besides keeping them profitable all at the same time ! So they need the desktop parts to keep their fabs running at near 100% capacity utilization(guesstimate) whilst the enthusiast/sever parts keep them afloat & give them the ability to "innovate" more than AMD !

 

[ShintaiDK]

Have any of you considered the crazy notion that if hexa-cores were mainstream, more software would be written to take advantage of hexa-cores?

No, simply due to Amdalhs law.

you would also be amazed how much server software is singlethreaded. But only scales due to concurrent users.

AMDs 6 and 8 "core" volume also shows its not what users want.