Haswell starts to squeeze out AMD and NVidia

[Exophase]

When talking about ULVs with discrete GPUs one can't forget Razer Edge Pro. Guess the next iteration of that will be IGP-only if it uses Haswell.

 

[LogOver]

Say what you want about dGPUs making sense (or not) -- in Ultrabooks, this move limits the choices of consumers and prevents OEMs from designing certain products (ultrabooks) that include components from some of Intel's competitors. That is the cost we all bear, I wonder what the benefit it.

The only Haswell SoC variants won't have PCIe. All other Haswell mobile series will have PCIe as before.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I wonder how much power they save limiting this option?

Say what you want about dGPUs making sense (or not) -- in Ultrabooks, this move limits the choices of consumers and prevents OEMs from designing certain products (ultrabooks) that include components from some of Intel's competitors. That is the cost we all bear, I wonder what the benefit it.

Until someone can figure that out, we have no way of knowing Intel's motivations. Although certainly it could be a case of two birds one stone 😀

It also saves pins and traces plus reduces package size.

 

[blackened23]

When talking about ULVs with discrete GPUs one can't forget Razer Edge Pro. Guess the next iteration of that will be IGP-only if it uses Haswell.

To my knowledge, that system is using the quad core mobile Haswell which is unaffected by this change. A Haswell successor for the Razer Edge is already in production and uses a GTX 775M...

I really don't see this "change" being much of a change at all, because affected systems (tablets, ultra slim products) really don't need dGPU.

 

[SiliconWars]

Nobody who bought an ultrabook has a clue about PC hardware let's be honest.

Intel are just doing what they've always done. Nvidia were used as a toy to keep AMD in check for years, but they serve no purpose now and they'll be shut out of more markets as time goes by. The more you compete with Intel, the more they shut you out or look for alternatives or help your competition.

 

[LogOver]

Nobody who bought an ultrabook has a clue about PC hardware let's be honest.

Intel are just doing what they've always done. Nvidia were used as a toy to keep AMD in check for years, but they serve no purpose now and they'll be shut out of more markets as time goes by. The more you compete with Intel, the more they shut you out or look for alternatives or help your competition.

Intel does not really competing with AMD in ultramobile spice. The main Intel's competitors there are ARM vendors (Samsung, Apple, Nvidia...). None of these offers solution with option for external graphics. This is really about battery life - less about performance.

 

[NTMBK]

Only a handful, but they are out there.

So the market did decide? It sounds like its a niche that couldnt substain itself. It would have to be fitted with a 640M or higher today to matter. And the 640M is 35W TDP. Thats most likely more than the entire rest of the motherboard combined.

3 of those ones I posted had 640Ms in them... 😕

 

[NTMBK]

I really don't see this "change" being much of a change at all, because affected systems (tablets, ultra slim products) really don't need dGPU.

Is it Intel's place to decide what we really need? They seem to have decided that ultraslim products need dGPU level performance, as they have crammed GT3 into a ULV chip- but they don't want anyone but Intel offering it.

 

[blackened23]

Is it Intel's place to decide what we really need? They seem to have decided that ultraslim products need dGPU level performance, as they have crammed GT3 into a ULV chip- but they don't want anyone but Intel offering it.

You understand that this is being aimed at devices with sub 15W TDP? Who the heck would want to add a 35W discrete graphics chip in a tablet? A tablet doesn't have the space for a large laptop battery so it makes absolute ZERO sense to add discrete graphics to such a device - It's common sense. Aside from this, intel has to make trade-offs to improve efficiency. This is all part of that, they can't be held back by legacy - they have to change the architecture and make trade-offs to improve their efficiency.

If you want discrete graphics get a full size laptop. You don't purchase a device that is the size of an ipad for discrete graphics performance.

 

[LogOver]

Is it Intel's place to decide what we really need? They seem to have decided that ultraslim products need dGPU level performance, as they have crammed GT3 into a ULV chip- but they don't want anyone but Intel offering it.

Ultraslim products are not limited to ULV chips only. There are ultrabooks with CPUs such i5-3320M.
As for "Intel's decision about what we really need" - I guess they did market research and I think they found that there are much more people who would prefer better mobility over having external graphics. I dont know how much power Intel saves on removing PCIe interface but it can be significant saving.

 

[Vesku]

Wonder how this fits with the FTC settlement:

"maintain a key interface, known as the PCI Express Bus, for at least six years in a way that will not limit the performance of graphics processing chips. These assurances will provide incentives to manufacturers of complementary, and potentially competitive, products to Intel’s CPUs to continue to innovate; and"

6 years from 2010 = 2016

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/08/intel.shtm

 

[tential]

I don't see what benefit intel gains from doing this to soley keep AMD and Nvidia out. You guys do realize that the laptop they sell, whether AMD or Nvidia provides a gpu or not STILL contains THEIR chip.

I think I agree with blackened that this is more for competing with ARM than anything else. They need to be efficient as possible and cut out the fat if they want to be relevant. Otherwise ARM will steal more of their business that for a long time was a given that it was intel's business. Like I always say, look what happened when Athlon 64 started chipping away at intel's business for a bit. Intel doesn't like to lose and I think they're making sure that they do NOT lose.

My dad bought my brother Transformer for school when he went to college. That's ARM chip, no intel inside. That was Fall 2012. That would have been unheard of in the past. I don't think intel is doing this to screw over AMD or Nvidia. They're doing this to ensure that ultrabooks have great battery life and that ARM doesn't eat into their sales anymore than they already are.

 

[notty22]

Wonder how this fits with the FTC settlement:

"maintain a key interface, known as the PCI Express Bus, for at least six years in a way that will not limit the performance of graphics processing chips. These assurances will provide incentives to manufacturers of complementary, and potentially competitive, products to Intel’s CPUs to continue to innovate; and"

6 years from 2010 = 2016

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/08/intel.shtm

There are probably a few dozen addendum's to that paragraph. Most likely involving %'s of desktop/ mobile offerings. I'm sure Intel's legal department vetted the details.[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheeseburger#cite_note-7"][/URL]

 

[Enigmoid]

How many ultrabooks today are sold with discrete GFX?

There are a lot of standard size notebooks sold with ULV chips in them with a dgpu (the difference between ULV and SV is minimal, about 20% but cutting the tdp down allows for a dgpu). This obviously won't be possible with haswell.

Lenovo will be introducing an AMD Kabini 15" S415 model laptop with discrete Radeon 8000M graphics that boosts performance and will probably be priced much lower than Intel Ultrabooks since chips like the i7-4500u cost almost $400!

Having ability to use discrete GPUs is a good choice and I am glad AMD is providing choices to customers.

Kabini is already CPU bottlenecking its igp.

Intel's cpu's don't cost the oem anything like the listed tray price on intel's website (thats why the retail price of the 4770k is basically the same or slightly less than the listed tray price from intel and that retail price includes markup and distribution).

Not to mention that the 15 watt i5 haswell ULV will thrash kabini in cpu and gpu performance at the same TDP (dual channel ram = better igp).

 

[LogOver]

Wonder how this fits with the FTC settlement:

"maintain a key interface, known as the PCI Express Bus, for at least six years in a way that will not limit the performance of graphics processing chips. These assurances will provide incentives to manufacturers of complementary, and potentially competitive, products to Intel’s CPUs to continue to innovate; and"

6 years from 2010 = 2016

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/08/intel.shtm

It says that Intel should not limit performance of GPU on products which have PCIe. It doesn't say that Intel should incorporate PCIe bus into all products.

 

[2is]

There are various Haswell sku's, this particular one won't have dGPU as an option. There are other mobile variants that will. I welcome the change, it's not limiting in anyway since they still have processors that will properly support dGPU. For a consumer like me who would buy an Ultrabook and has no need for a dGPU, this is perfect. I see it as having more options, not less.

Ultrabooks are about trimming the fat and Intel has taken that approach to the CPU designed for that specific use.

 

[Lepton87]

Do regular HW mobile chips support s0ix sleep states? If not then that's a bummer, the biggest improvement will only be seen in battery life on 1 chip ULV skus. 🙁 The rest won't see much of an improvement, just like on the desktop. Seems like if you want dGPU, 37W TDP HW SKU is the lowest. Did anyone test HW extreme on mobile? What's that SKU name and clocks? I wonder what kind of an improvement we can expect over 3940XM.

UPDATE:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75133...essor-Extreme-Edition-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

The exact same clocks, 3/3.9 so it should be around 10% faster. For 1100$ they really should have included Crystalwell though, even if only for CPU performance. I'd be not surprised if i7-4950HQ Processor actually won some CPU benchmarks probably for half the price.
Its clocks are 2.4/3.6 so it could potentially win quite a few ST benchmarks. It's got 10W lower TDP to boot.

 

[LogOver]

Do regular HW mobile chips support s0ix sleep states? If not then that's a bummer, the biggest improvement will only be seen in battery life on 1 chip ULV skus. 🙁 The rest won't see much of an improvement, just like on the desktop. Seems like if you want dGPU, 37W TDP HW SKU is the lowest. Did anyone test HW extreme on mobile? What's that SKU name and clocks? I wonder what kind of an improvement we can expect over 3940XM.

UPDATE:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75133...essor-Extreme-Edition-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

The exact same clocks, 3/3.9 so it should be around 10% faster. For 1100$ they really should have included Crystalwell though, even if only for CPU performance. I'd be not surprised if i7-4950HQ Processor actually won some CPU benchmarks probably for half the price.
Its clocks are 2.4/3.6 so it could potentially win quite a few ST benchmarks. It's got 10W lower TDP to boot.

Actually Haswell's S0ix is not supported in Windows 8 (the support will arrive in Win 8.1). So it is reasonable to expect similar battery life gain for non-ult parts (at least in light workloads).
Also S0ix makes little sense for non-SoC devices, so non-ult/ulx parts wont support it. S0ix are system states (not cpu states), and cpu integrated power management controller can not control external devices sitting on pcie bus (i guess one more reason Haswell ult does not support pcie).
Also you may check MS specifications for connected standby:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj248729.aspx
And here is Atom z2760 power management implementation (should be similar in Haswell SoC):
https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/d...ments/product-briefs/atom-z2760-datasheet.pdf

 

[Lepton87]

Actually Haswell's S0ix is not supported in Windows 8 (the support will arrive in Win 8.1). So it is reasonable to expect similar battery life gain for non-ult parts (at least in light workloads).
Also S0ix makes little sense for non-SoC devices, so non-ult/ulx parts wont support it. S0ix are system states (not cpu states), and cpu integrated power management controller can not control external devices sitting on pcie bus (i guess one more reason Haswell ult does not support pcie).
Also you may check MS specifications for connected standby:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj248729.aspx
And here is Atom z2760 power management implementation (should be similar in Haswell SoC):
https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/d...ments/product-briefs/atom-z2760-datasheet.pdf

Anand says otherwise in his HW ULT article.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7047/the-haswell-ultrabook-review-core-i74500u-tested/3

He says it IS supported but we should still see tangible power consumption improvement when W8.1 comes.

Relevant parts

Windows 8 also plays a significant role in all of this as the OS supports coalescing of tasks in software to ensure that it isn’t working against Intel’s Power Optimizer in hardware.

That's IDF slide.

No Connected Standby for Now

Although you should be able to realize some of the benefits from S0ix with the first Haswell Ultrabooks, Connected Standby (periodic content refresh while in a sleep state) requires OS support. For Haswell Ultrabooks, that means waiting for Windows 8.1.

Even on the S0ix side, it’s not clear to me whether all of the devices in the system capable of going into D3 (their lowest power state) while active will actually do so until Windows 8.1. I get the distinct impression that Haswell Ultrabooks will see a tangible increase in battery life with Windows 8.1.

So it looks like those states are already improving battery life in W8 but not in W7 which I still use.

 

[Exophase]

To my knowledge, that system is using the quad core mobile Haswell which is unaffected by this change. A Haswell successor for the Razer Edge is already in production and uses a GTX 775M...

Guess they're really leaving efficiency on the table with it then..

 

[2is]

Anand says otherwise in his HW ULT article.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7047/the-haswell-ultrabook-review-core-i74500u-tested/3

He says it IS supported but we should still see tangible power consumption improvement when W8.1 comes.

Relevant parts

That's IDF slide.


So it looks like those states are already improving battery life in W8 but not in W7 which I still use.

Well you're only getting this processor in an Ultrabook and if you're buying a Haswell UltraBook, it comes with Windows 8, so kind of a non issue there.

 

[Lepton87]

Well you're only getting this processor in an Ultrabook and if you're buying a Haswell UltraBook, it comes with Windows 8, so kind of a non issue there.

It's a non-issue but I don't find touch-screen useful in a laptop and generally I don't like the modern UI formerly known as Metro. I'm pretty sure a lot of people will use that touchscreen tough, my 4-year old daughter tries to touch icons on my Dell U2711 and gets frustrated that nothing happens, she's been playing with touchscreen phones since well, ever. I gave her some old phones as toys, now she expects every screen to be a touch screen.

 

[Ibra]

No it only hurt AMD because:

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31551-nvidia-mobile-boss-talks-haswell
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31461-nvidia-won-most-haswell-high-end-notebooks

 

[IntelUser2000]

Actually Haswell's S0ix is not supported in Windows 8 (the support will arrive in Win 8.1). So it is reasonable to expect similar battery life gain for non-ult parts (at least in light workloads).

Don't confuse S0iX with Connected Standby. The latter is the Microsoft feature for really low power sleep mode, while the former is how the power management system works for the S0iX supporting chips.

 

[NTMBK]

You understand that this is being aimed at devices with sub 15W TDP? Who the heck would want to add a 35W discrete graphics chip in a tablet? A tablet doesn't have the space for a large laptop battery so it makes absolute ZERO sense to add discrete graphics to such a device - It's common sense. Aside from this, intel has to make trade-offs to improve efficiency. This is all part of that, they can't be held back by legacy - they have to change the architecture and make trade-offs to improve their efficiency.

If you want discrete graphics get a full size laptop. You don't purchase a device that is the size of an ipad for discrete graphics performance.

First- yes, you can fit a dGPU into a tablet. See the Razer Edge. Second, it's not targeting devices with a sub 15W TDP- the CPUs alone have a 15W TDP, so the total device will exceed that. And thirdly, if you want to fit the maximum gaming performance into a given thermal envelope it can make sense to combine a low power CPU with a more powerful GPU- the next-gen consoles are a good example of this.