Intel Iris & Iris Pro Graphics: Haswell GT3/GT3e Gets a Brand

[lagokc]

Geforce sounds so 90's.

The GeForce name is from the 90s...

Oh god that was a decade and a half ago.

 

[Olikan]

Only for desktop. Mobile comes way later which means Broadwell is his proper rival in the mobile space.

lately... amd have lunched mobile first, desktop latter

 

[sm625]

GT3 matters for no one because there is going to be a price floor on it, and that floor is going to be at neck level. What matters is how fast haswell GT2 will be. It looks like it wont even be faster than llano A8.

 

[Arkadrel]

This means that Intels 4770R (iris) should get around 2200 points in 3Dmark 11.

AMD needs that GDDR5 system memory for its APUs and fast.

 

[mikk]

lately... amd have lunched mobile first, desktop latter

Irrelevant for Kaveri. AMD told they plan to start shipping Kaveri very late in Q4 for desktop models first.

AMD expects to start shipping Kaveri in a late Q4 timeframe this year. These parts will be desktop at first and will transition to mobile in 2014. AMD wants (and needs) to get these parts out in a timely manner, and they are pulling in the launch as much as possible. Hence the desktop first release while they refine production to be able to adequately address the mobile space. Achieving good bins and yields at the higher TDP is easier than trying to hit those numbers for a 35 watt and below product http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Shows-...Temash-Kabini-and-Kaveri-side-Sea-Islandsline.

Remember, Richland shipment started in late 2012. We have May and still no Richland notebook available. Don't expect Kaveri mobile before mid 2014.

 

[zsdersw]

They should've called it Hammerhead Eagle iThrust

 

[Maximilian]

lately... amd have lunched mobile first, desktop latter

 

[Phynaz]

What's your point?

 

[NTMBK]

What's your point?

That judging by Intel's slides, the 4770K will still lag behind the A10-5800K in GPU performance. (But the 4770R will overtake it.)

 

[Arkadrel]

What's your point?

Think hes saying with a ~3x score, that should put intels i7-4770R ~2200 points.

3Dmark 11 is very CPU dependent (score wise).
A10 5800k @ 4.4ghz cpu scores 1713, while at at stock only 1493.

I think Richland, will bring it around where Haswell's GT3e 's are.

That said its weird to think Intel might actually have igp performance crown with haswell.

 

[AtenRa]

What's your point?

No point to make at this time, just posted the slides for comparison reasons.

 

[Olikan]

why the surprise? Laptops are far more important than desktops, for amd or intel

Earlier this month we previewed AMD's Llano architecture in a notebook environment. Now we have the desktop version with a 100 W TDP

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975.html

Although AMD's second-generation mainstream APU platform, codename Trinity, launched months ago in notebooks the official desktop launch is today

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6347/amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity-on-the-desktop-part-2

 

[mikk]

That said its weird to think Intel might actually have igp performance crown with haswell.

In mobile they have for sure. The fastest Trinity mobile model is just 20-30% faster than HD4000.

 

[Kallogan]

If Kaveri scales on Temash/Kabini perfs,it will spank intel.

 

[Piroko]

3DMark11 on mobile Trinity trails real world gaming performance. Now its up to Intel to make sure that same thing doesn't happen to Iris/Iris Pro.

Never understood that argument of yours. The 3DMark score of Trinity is somewhat higher than it should be, but one can still extrapolate expected gaming performance of non-mainstream games from that score. Doing the same with HD3000 will leave you with quite some surprises.

 

[Sweepr]

Very interesting article by NotebookCheck, comparing Haswell to some of the most popular NVIDIA mobile dGPUs: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-...ails-for-Haswell-s-Iris-graphics.91914.0.html

 

[tokie]

Interesting.

I assume we will see the Iris Pro with 47w on the updated retina MBP 15" thereby getting rid of the Geforce 650m?

 

[blackened23]

Interesting.

I assume we will see the Iris Pro with 47w on the updated retina MBP 15" thereby getting rid of the Geforce 650m?

Yeah. There's pretty much no reason for Apple to use discrete graphics in the rMBP any longer, because discrete graphics only subtracts from battery life. The trade-off was worth it in the past, perhaps, because HD4000 wasn't up to snuff. That just isn't the case now, the performance difference is gone and the trade offs (worse battery life due to discrete graphics) aren't worth it this time around. The rMBP with a combination of GTe3 graphics and haswell power characteristics should make for a great machine, definitely looking forward to that. If the battery life is 10 hours (versus the 4~5 now) i'm definitely in for one.

I have to say I didn't think this day would come, I thought that iGPU would always and forever remain worthless. But intel proved me wrong, lol...this is definitely good for intel and very very bad for everyone else (eg AMD and nvidia). Discrete chips will very likely only be used in full size gaming laptops now, I can't think of any valid reason why an ultrabook would ever use discrete. And ultrabooks are just a far bigger market than full-size laptops. Hell, many gaming tablets/laptops actually use GT650M so many gaming devices will probably use GTe3 as well this time around. The performance is good enough so discrete just is not worth it.

 

[Maximilian]

why the surprise? Laptops are far more important than desktops, for amd or intel

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6347/amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity-on-the-desktop-part-2

"lunched"

Thats why

 

[Sweepr]

There are rumours of Apple dumping NVIDIA in favor of Iris Pro at the heart of the next Macbook Pro: www.nextpowerup.com/news/1204/macbooks-with-intel-haswell-cpus-coming-this-summer.html. I wonder if this is the right time or they should till Broadwell. 4C/8T Haswell with GT3e should draw less power than 4C/8T IB+GT650M, maybe they've redesigned the 2013 Macbook Pro. Intel compared GT3e to GT650M not to long ago, maybe they want to convince Apple the advantages (less $, less power, less heat, slimmer/lighter design) outweight the disadvantages (lower performance?).

 

[ShintaiDK]

There are rumours of Apple dumping NVIDIA in favor of Iris Pro at the heart of the next Macbook Pro: www.nextpowerup.com/news/1204/macbooks-with-intel-haswell-cpus-coming-this-summer.html. I wonder if this is the right time or they should till Broadwell. 4C/8T Haswell with GT3e should draw less power than 4C/8T IB+GT650M, maybe they've redesigned the 2013 Macbook Pro. Intel compared GT3e to GT650M not to long ago, maybe they want to convince Apple the advantages (less $, less power, less heat, slimmer/lighter design) outweight the disadvantages (lower performance?).

I think the size benefit of not having a discrete card. Plus higher reliability on both hardware and software is a key point.

 

[blackened23]

I think the size benefit of not having a discrete card. Plus higher reliability on both hardware and software is a key point.

Battery life Discrete mobile chips, even the efficient ones such as the excellent Kepler GT650M are a battery drain. Battery life is a big selling point for Apple (and all mobile devices, actually) and likely one of the reasons they're going with the GTe3.

The rMBP is certainly an impressive machine, if it can get 10 hours of battery life i'm pretty excited. I'm not excited about the price, mind you, but the end-product will be great.

 

[Enigmoid]

Yeah. There's pretty much no reason for Apple to use discrete graphics in the rMBP any longer, because discrete graphics only subtracts from battery life. The trade-off was worth it in the past, perhaps, because HD4000 wasn't up to snuff. That just isn't the case now, the performance difference is gone and the trade offs (worse battery life due to discrete graphics) aren't worth it this time around. The rMBP with a combination of GTe3 graphics and haswell power characteristics should make for a great machine, definitely looking forward to that. If the battery life is 10 hours (versus the 4~5 now) i'm definitely in for one.

I have to say I didn't think this day would come, I thought that iGPU would always and forever remain worthless. But intel proved me wrong, lol...this is definitely good for intel and very very bad for everyone else (eg AMD and nvidia). Discrete chips will very likely only be used in full size gaming laptops now, I can't think of any valid reason why an ultrabook would ever use discrete. And ultrabooks are just a far bigger market than full-size laptops. Hell, many gaming tablets/laptops actually use GT650M so many gaming devices will probably use GTe3 as well this time around. The performance is good enough so discrete just is not worth it.

1) Not really, apple supports switchable graphics and you can easily set the system to use only the igp. There is none to very little loss of battery life with the 650m in the rmbp (in OSX, under windows its substantial because only the dgpu runs).

2) The gt3e will be substantially weaker than the 650m in the rmbp. Remember apple uses a 650m with GDDR5 at 900 mhz core, 1252mhz vram. This is almost a 660m. The hd graphics 5200 edram is probably on average going to be closer to the 640m than the 650m (because intel needs to improve their drivers), the rmbp 15" gets a 3dmark gpu score of around 2400 pts. The gt3e will fight with the 650m but probably lose almost all the time. Intel driver support is also less than stellar though impoving (fairly inconsistent; some things intel igp does well, other it just completely sucks at. How will the gt3 perform in more professional applications?).

3) You are probably not going to see a doubling in battery life. That 1800 x 2880 screen probably sucks the lion's share of power at idle. I believe that most 15 inch laptops with a 1080p screen generally use around 10-20 watts at idle or light usage. The cpu is a mobile quadcore which generally only consumes about 4-5 watts in power saver mode, even reducing that down to 1-2 watts isn't going to double battery life. Its still a 45-47 watt cpu, under load its going to last just as long (though being faster it will get more work done).

4) Couple of reasons why gt3 isn't going to eliminate the market. First its quite expensive. Intel is charging $50 for the edram alone (don't forget that the gt3 chips is probably going to cost substantially more than a gt2 chip). This is probably more expensive than a 650m + 2 GB GDDR5 (I can get a lenovo y500 with 8 GB ram, 1080p screen, i5 processor, and two 750m with 4 GB total GDDR5 for $899). Second what about combinations such as a 35 watt SV part and a discrete gpu.

 

[blackened23]

Well the fact of the matter is Apple isn't using discrete graphics in the 2013 rMBP. Furthermore, you cannot add discrete chips without a corresponding loss of battery life. Now the kepler may be efficient, but it's not without 1) obvious additional costs and 2) losses in battery life during certain usage scenarios. Any workload involving heavy use of graphics will be more efficient using integrated graphics rather than discrete, period.

Intel claims that the GT3E is faster than the GT650M. Based on the fact that apple is no longer using discrete, i'm inclined to believe that.

Take that for what it's worth. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how mobile discrete isn't dead, and I would agree with that for full size gaming laptops. However, we know this: most ultrabooks already (95%) do not use discrete. The biggest discrete customer was Apple and now THEY aren't using discrete. This also ignores the fact that full size laptops are a dying breed, nobody buys them anymore except gamers who want the latest and greater quad core processors with discrete graphics, battery life be damned. You can't follow that business model with ultra portable devices such as the macbook air and MBP. Battery life matters, as does cost.

The facts here are just very telling. I suspect if nvidia had a strong incentive for discrete over GT3E, that apple would have used them. AFAIK the GT700 are mere re-badges of existing kepler parts, yes? Anyway, apple didn't use discrete. What's the conclusion here? Do they know something we don't?

 

[piasabird]

I could see a $500-$700 motherboard/BGA i7. Sounds nice, but I dont plan on buying that.