Haswell starts to squeeze out AMD and NVidia

[gorobei]

Read the S|A articles on the subject.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/17/intel-slams-the-door-on-discrete-gpus/
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/18/how-intel-can-slam-the-door-on-gpus/
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/21/intel-cuts-out-gpus-technical-tidbits/

interesting read.

that is a pretty grim future for everyone if intel is going the 'starve them for bandwidth route'.
hopefully some of the more technically savvy sites will monitor this and call it out if they do go pcie2 instead of pcie3.

assuming they do manage to squeeze out amd and nvidia cards, does that mean amd apus will be the only game in town for gamers? or are we looking at consoles only if you want serious gpu power?

also i was listening to the maximum pc podcast, they were talking about how haswell is a mobile chip response and that intel may skip a few generations before coming out with a chip for serious desktop/workstation/server given amd's lack of product performance.

 

[Sheep221]

Ultrabooks are here to replace the netbooks, they are small but fast to do the tasks netbooks were slow at, which is basically any basic internet/office work and mild multimedia. Despite the ultrabooks are expensive, they are not intended for high end use where high end performance or gaming performance would be required. Although the Iris 5200 IGP is quite competitive to discrete mobile dedicated chips. In fact they are for portability, being small, thin, light and have long battery life, so they are aimed especially at frequent travelers.
On other hand, the PCIe is removed only from these ultrabooks chips, the conventional desktop and mobile CPUs have and will have fully working PCIe bus.

 

[Lepton87]

Although the Iris 5200 IGP is quite competitive to discrete mobile dedicated chips. In fact they are for portability, being small, thin, light and have long battery life, so they are aimed especially at frequent travelers.
On other hand, the PCIe is removed only from these ultrabooks chips, the conventional desktop and mobile CPUs have and will have fully working PCIe bus.

Iris pro is at best competitive with the worst 28nm dGPU available but at what cost? 4950HQ is very expensive and GTX650m wipes the floor with Iris Pro. They are not yet competitive with real dGPUs, they achieved parity with the worst garbage bin 28nm mobile chips.

 

[LogOver]

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.

According to Intel, S0ix states effectively replace S3/S4 ACPI sleep/standby states (which are not supported in Z2760 any more). MS Connected standby is SW/OS implementation, designed to support these new power states. Since S0ix are not part of ACPI standard, there is a little chance that any external hardware (read GPU) can support these states - additional reason why Intel removed PCIe from Haswell SoCs.

 

[LogOver]

Iris pro is at best competitive with the worst 28nm dGPU available but at what cost? 4950HQ is very expensive and GTX650m wipes the floor with Iris Pro. They are not yet competitive with real dGPUs, they achieved parity with the worst garbage bin 28nm mobile chips.

Notebooks with GT 650M start from ~$850-900 (with i3 CPU). Something tells me that this is the price point for upcoming notebooks with i7-4750HQ.
Also additional Haswell cheaper models are coming (i5-4300M, i5-4200M, i3-4100M, etc.) All of these will have PCIe.

 

[blackened23]

edit: dp

 

[nemesismk2]

how is haswell going to squeeze out AMD and NVidia? From the reviews i have seen of haswell it's a good cpu but not great. Remember that Integrated HD 8670D Graphics will always be faster for video (inc gaming) than anything Intel Integrated.

 

[NTMBK]

how is haswell going to squeeze out AMD and NVidia? From the reviews i have seen of haswell it's a good cpu but not great. Remember that Integrated HD 8670D Graphics will always be faster for video (inc gaming) than anything Intel Integrated.

Actually, the Iris Pro 5200 beats it.

 

[mrmt]

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.

Mobile Haswell is SoC, so yes, you have 15W for the entire package. It's a lot different to engineer a case and cooling for a 15W SoC and a 15W SoC + 35W dGPU.

 

[ShintaiDK]

how is haswell going to squeeze out AMD and NVidia? From the reviews i have seen of haswell it's a good cpu but not great. Remember that Integrated HD 8670D Graphics will always be faster for video (inc gaming) than anything Intel Integrated.

Intel got the fastest mobile IGP there is

 

[NTMBK]

Mobile Haswell is SoC, so yes, you have 15W for the entire package.

Entire package != device. There's this big glowy thing called a "screen", for a start.

It's a lot different to engineer a case and cooling for a 15W SoC and a 15W SoC + 35W dGPU.

I am well aware of that, yes, but the option was still there with IB- get a ULV Intel chip and combine it with a decent dGPU for a ~50W TDP combination with pretty good graphics performance, in a still quite slim laptop (some of them even counted as Ultrabooks). But now you can't do that.

 

[mrmt]

I am well aware of that, yes, but the option was still there with IB- get a ULV Intel chip and combine it with a decent dGPU for a ~50W TDP combination with pretty good graphics performance, in a still quite slim laptop (some of them even counted as Ultrabooks). But now you can't do that.

I see your point. And I'm saying that 50W is too much. 47W is the top HSW Iris pro part, the same Razer Edge performance but with just one package and far more aggressive power saving features (albeit it is more expensive). It's not where Intel wants things to go. Intel is really keen on mobile, meaning phones and tablets/convertibles. Ultrabooks are just a bridge for this goal, not an end on itself.

This means that we're going to see Intel going even more aggressive on form factor and battery size, and dGPU simply doesn't fit here, because they need cooling, they consume power, they also eat battery space. Broadwell will probably scale down Core to the point of fanless devices, the next step will be Skymont, which will further evolve on this trend.

Everyone is heading for SoCs and mobile devices, and these devices devices will need both integration and power saving features. A leaky PCIe interface doesn't have a place here.

 

[Sweepr]

This and the fact that ULT Haswell i7 performs exactly like an ULV Ivy Bridge i7 when plugged in makes me proud of my UX32VD.

 

[Enigmoid]

Notebooks with GT 650M start from ~$850-900 (with i3 CPU). Something tells me that this is the price point for upcoming notebooks with i7-4750HQ.
Also additional Haswell cheaper models are coming (i5-4300M, i5-4200M, i3-4100M, etc.) All of these will have PCIe.

????

No, here is a i5 notebook with 1080p screen, 8 GB RAM, DUAL 650m for $980.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834312439

You can find it on sale for cheaper (i5 version costs $850 generally).

 

[LogOver]

????

No, here is a i5 notebook with 1080p screen, 8 GB RAM, DUAL 650m for $980.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834312439

You can find it on sale for cheaper (i5 version costs $850 generally).

This is old model on sale. i7 (4-core) based notebooks without dGPU starts from a price which is $300 lower. This is what should be expected for Iris-based notebooks.

 

[bgt]

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

Wow, you're forced to use Nvidia cards in your laptops.................not a nice thought(brrrr).
If there is 1 company that scr.wed me all these years with the Geforce problems(solder problem) its this.

 

[mrmt]

Wow, you're forced to use Nvidia cards in your laptops.................not a nice thought(brrrr).
If there is 1 company that scr.wed me all these years with the Geforce problems(solder problem) its this.

Is AMD Enduro on par with Nvidia Optimus, or does AMD still has driver issues?

 

[IntelUser2000]

According to Intel, S0ix states effectively replace S3/S4 ACPI sleep/standby states (which are not supported in Z2760 any more).

That's true, but you don't need Connected Standby on a S0iX system. You just don't get the near-instant wake-up times(300ms compared to 2-3 seconds with initial Haswell Ultrabooks), and the up-to-date-data on wake up(which is served by Intel's Smart Connect already).

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.

That's not true. The new Acer Aspire S3 and the Gigabyte U35F uses discrete graphics with the Core i5 4200U chip. The latter even uses a GT 750M.

 

[LogOver]

That's not true. The new Acer Aspire S3 and the Gigabyte U35F uses discrete graphics with the Core i5 4200U chip. The latter even uses a GT 750M.

I wonder how it is possible. It seems Macbook Air also somehow uses PCIe lanes of ult chips for internal storage (according to Anand). Intel says PCI is not supported, but then mentions 12 PCIe lanes:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75459/Intel-Core-i5-4200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_60-GHz

 

[ShintaiDK]

I wonder how it is possible. It seems Macbook Air also somehow uses PCIe lanes of ult chips for internal storage (according to Anand). Intel says PCI is not supported, but then mentions 12 PCIe lanes:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75459/Intel-Core-i5-4200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_60-GHz

They come from the chipset part on the CPU package. Not the CPU itself. Hence PCIe 2.0 and not 3.0.