What about Skylake Iris Pro?

[Cloudfire777]

Its not just the VRAM thats soldered in some notebooks, the GPU chip itself is also soldered to the motherboard.
Less and less OEMs use MXM cards now in notebooks.
With Skylake being BGA only for notebooks, not long now until everything except the system memory and SSD are soldered. Just one big chunk of hardware and less options for enthusiasts.

With desktops its different since there are so many system builders around that pick parts from different manufacturers, while in notebooks its mostly OEMs that run the show and since soldered means more profit, thats the way it will go. It will take a long time, if it even will happen, until desktops have soldered GPUs.

 

[BFG10K]

People once said the same for GPUs that couldnt get memory upgrades.

GPU memory upgrades never amounted to anything beyond a niche, unlike system memory which has been a standard upgrade path for the last 30+ years in desktops, including a vast array of platforms that weren't even x86.

Regardless, GPUs are still discrete parts. They can be swapped out and upgraded. So can RAM sticks. But a motherboard upgrade changes the whole base system, and even that's impossible in most laptops.

The simple fact that so many laptops today ship with soldered memory without any upgrade option seals the deal.

Laptops are portable systems, so by definition lend themselves to the all-in-one category. Same thing as phones and tablets.

The desktop market won't accept or tolerate soldered memory with no upgrade path. You may as well predict desktop motherboards will soon be soldered into their cases.

Likewise, HBM/eDRAM on a CPU adds costs to that CPU. The lower desktop market won't accept those costs, neither will the higher end given they'll always be better served by dGPUs and expandable memory.

Iris only makes sense in all-in-one portable devices, or in "charge-more-for-less" devices, like Macs; those that think it'll replace dGPUs in desktop space as a viable alternative are deluding themselves.

I have to laugh when people go as far as to argue that watercooling integration is somehow realistic and will allow 300W parts to be soldered onto the motherboard, and apparently both the low and high market segments will eagerly swallow the extra costs in exchange for non-upgradable parts, thereby killing the dGPU market.

Even better, many of these same people claim the PC gaming/PC desktop market is dying in other threads. This is deliciously ironic given by extension it implies Iris is dying since Intel has failed to make any kind of impact in phone or tablet space. In fact, their mobile division bleeds billions of dollars every year.

Some people really want to believe. :awe:

 

[ShintaiDK]

GPU memory upgrades never amounted to anything beyond a niche, unlike system memory which has been a standard upgrade path for the last 30+ years in desktops, including a vast array of platforms that weren't even x86.

Regardless, GPUs are still discrete parts. They can be swapped out and upgraded. So can RAM sticks. But a motherboard upgrade changes the whole base system, and even that's impossible in most laptops.


Laptops are portable systems, so by definition lend themselves to the all-in-one category. Same thing as phones and tablets.

The desktop market won't accept or tolerate soldered memory with no upgrade path. You may as well predict desktop motherboards will soon be soldered into their cases.

Likewise, HBM/eDRAM on a CPU adds costs to that CPU. The lower desktop market won't accept those costs, neither will the higher end given they'll always be better served by dGPUs and expandable memory.

Iris only makes sense in all-in-one portable devices, or in "charge-more-for-less" devices, like Macs; those that think it'll replace dGPUs in desktop space as a viable alternative are deluding themselves.

I have to laugh when people go as far as to argue that watercooling integration is somehow realistic and will allow 300W parts to be soldered onto the motherboard, and apparently both the low and high market segments will eagerly swallow the extra costs in exchange for non-upgradable parts, thereby killing the dGPU market.

Even better, many of these same people claim the PC gaming/PC desktop market is dying in other threads. This is deliciously ironic given by extension it implies Iris is dying given Intel has failed to make any kind of impact in phone or tablet space. In fact, their mobile division bleeds billions of dollars every year.

Some people really want to believe. :awe:

In the old days, almost all video cards could be upgraded. It first really started to dissapear with performance cards. You could also upgrade or add L2 cache for countless years.

Discrete GPUs is losing marketshare as well, and they are losing relatively fast. Just look at the JPR report is you are in doubt. Its very clear where we are moving.

Stacked DRAM adds cost to the CPU. But so did the IGP, memory controller and so on. That doesnt stop it from happening. Also the platform cost may end up cheaper. While platform size will go down.

Even if say an i7 6700K shipped with 16GB of stacked memory in the form of HMC or HBM. I dont think you would have more than 1% of the buyers complain. Its going to happen, nomatter if you or I like it or not. Simply because its what the OEMs and the wast crowd want. Plenty of desktop is already being sold without the option to add a GPU. Because they are in reality mobile chips in small desktops.

 

[MrTeal]

The difference between a CPU and GPU is pretty vast though. A GPU has a pretty standard workload, and it's much easier to standardize an amount of VRAM. CPU loads are much more diverse and so Intel would either have to start carrying many more SKUs to service different tiers of clients, or further split the platform and move more demanding clients to a HEDT platform.

 

[Blue_Max]

broadwell does have a full iris pro with the new 65 watt desktop processors releasing june 2nd. Skylake is going to be 40% faster then the full broadwell iris pro releasing on the 65 watt desktop chips?

~650TI speed and a great CPU? Oh gawd, yes!

My dream of building a decent-gaming, very small portable are almost here!

I'll bet an Intel NUC machine is just around the corner! [crossing fingers]

 

[freeskier93]

Its 8 GB shared RAM so take that into account. If 3 GB of that is used as vram (big zen APU) that leaves 5 GB for the game + OS + background progams which may be cutting it in two years (add to that the fact that windows doesn't like going above 90-95% utilization).

This is why AMD is pushing HSA, with HSA dedicated VRAM does not exist, CPU and GPU truly share memory.

 

[ShintaiDK]

This is why AMD is pushing HSA, with HSA dedicated VRAM does not exist, CPU and GPU truly share memory.

Doesnt matter and HSA isnt solving anything. And its still not enough, specially not in 2017+

 

[Valantar]

I can't help but think the Iris pro line will stay irrelevant as long as it's limited to disproportionately powerful cpus. After all, if the target market is entry level gaming, how does it make sense to limit its application to >$300 CPUs? Except for high end laptops like the MBP, it just makes no sense. An i3 with Iris Pro would make sense for this use case, but Intel has shown no interest in moving in this direction.

This is where AMD might have an opening. If their next two or three generations of APUs show consistent performance increases in the same power envelope and at the same prices (or even higher if they implement some sort of HBM shared memory architecture), this could create a whole new mid range iGPU-only gaming market - which they'd own. At the same time, they would of course have to improve their CPU perf too. But for this market, not by all that much - Carrizo seems to have this balance figured out quite well. If AMD can deliver an APU capable of performing equally to the Alienware Alpha, I'd buy one easily. And I believe quite a few others would too.


Also, although there is a clear tendency towards total integration in the mobile space, I doubt we'll see that for quite a few years still as even DDR3/4 is (and will be) significantly cheaper than HBM. A modern system should have >4GB (at least 6 to avoid excessive page file usage) for ordinary usage, a few gigs more for gaming, and a GPU for FHD in the next few years should have at least 2GB of VRAM. In other words, 8GB of total system memory through HBM is cutting it mighty close. A better interim solution would be a hybrid memory architecture with perhaps 4GB of HBM and 8-16GB of DDR3/4, where the IGP gets priority access to the HBM. THE DDR would/could still be soldered, but it'd be a better solution for both OEMs and users.

 

[Mondozei]

Interesting discussion. One of my friends is buying a whole new desktop PC. It's not a rush but it's going to happen within 6 months or so. Right now he games on a crappy laptop and even on low everything and 720p barely gets by. Still, his gaming needs are relatively modest. Think CS:GO, GTA V, maybe Far Cry 3 is the most demanding game he'd play.

Does anyone know what the price premium was for Iris Pro for Haswell i5(preferably)? I was wondering if it is more economical for him to get a Iris Pro Skylake on the CPU right away or either A) use my old 560 Ti or B) get a new budget card(but it should be around 100-120 dollars at most).

If Skylake does medium at 1080p in games like GTA V or CS:GO, then it seems we'll have a winner, as long as the i5 and/or i7 isn't horribly overpriced.

 

[Valantar]

Interesting discussion. One of my friends is buying a whole new desktop PC. It's not a rush but it's going to happen within 6 months or so. Right now he games on a crappy laptop and even on low everything and 720p barely gets by. Still, his gaming needs are relatively modest. Think CS:GO, GTA V, maybe Far Cry 3 is the most demanding game he'd play.

Does anyone know what the price premium was for Iris Pro for Haswell i5(preferably)? I was wondering if it is more economical for him to get a Iris Pro Skylake on the CPU right away or either A) use my old 560 Ti or B) get a new budget card(but it should be around 100-120 dollars at most).

If Skylake does medium at 1080p in games like GTA V or CS:GO, then it seems we'll have a winner, as long as the i5 and/or i7 isn't horribly overpriced.

As Intel has never sold an LGA Iris Pro part before that's hard to know. The BGA-only 4770R is listed as having a tray price of $358 compared to the regular LGA 4770's $303. However these are OEM guideline prices, which can vary wildly due to all kinds of factors, especially the fact that these prices are just guidelines. As an example, the Broadwell i5 5200u and 5300u are listed with the same price, although Intel would logically charge more for the higher clocked SKU. Also, the 4770R is a 65W part, while the 4770 is 84W, and the R has only 6MB of cache to the regular version's 8. In other words, there is no apples-to-apples comparison available.

The differences between the i5 4670 and 4670R ate more or less the same: the R has 2MB less cache (4MB in this case), a far lower base frequency, slightly lower turbo, 65W TDP vs 84W, and a tray price of $276 to the regular version's $213. That's a sizeable price hike for a GPU that still isn't really fast enough for anything useful. Even the far slower i5 4570R sits at a sizeable premium at $255, btw.

Btw, if his needs are that simple, why not buy an APU? He'll get decent CPU performance, far better GPU performance than even iris pro, and for half the money.

 

[Blue_Max]

You make a very good point - we won't see Iris Pro on the cheaper i3/i5 processors.

i3 + video card is still the better value, though I'd take a new Iris Pro laptop any day.

 

[MisterLilBig]

i3 + video card is still the better value, though I'd take a new Iris Pro laptop any day.

A "new Iris Pro laptop" will cost 2 to 3 times as much as your "better value".

 

[mohit9206]

Someone said Iris Pro in Skylake might be as powerful as a 650ti.I find that assumption extremely hard to believe. Even the best AMD APU today doesn't have igpu as powerful as a 7750 let alone 650ti so my guess is Iris Pro will be around 6670 ddr3 level of performance.

 

[LTC8K6]

Someone said Iris Pro in Skylake might be as powerful as a 650ti.I find that assumption extremely hard to believe. Even the best AMD APU today doesn't have igpu as powerful as a 7750 let alone 650ti so my guess is Iris Pro will be around 6670 ddr3 level of performance.

Well, Iris Pro 5200 apparently beats a Richland 8650D iGpu.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

GT4e should be much faster than that, if that gives us any idea.

 

[MrTeal]

Someone said Iris Pro in Skylake might be as powerful as a 650ti.I find that assumption extremely hard to believe. Even the best AMD APU today doesn't have igpu as powerful as a 7750 let alone 650ti so my guess is Iris Pro will be around 6670 ddr3 level of performance.

Why? From Anand's numbers the current Haswell Iris Pro implementation already trades blows pretty well with a GT 640. The 650 Ti is essentially twice the card that the 640 is (768 Kepler shaders vs 384 at around the same frequency), while the top Skylake GT4e will be adding 80% more EUs to the 40 found in GT3e. We don't know that kind of improvements there will per EU going from Gen7 to Gen9, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that a 72EU Skylake Iris Pro could be twice as powerful as a 40EU Haswell one at the same frequencies.

 

[freeskier93]

Doesnt matter and HSA isnt solving anything. And its still not enough, specially not in 2017+

Regardless, the concept of separate VRAM from system RAM is antiquated. As integrated graphics take over and HBM becomes popular shared memory will have to happen to remove redundancies and further increase performance.

Well, Iris Pro 5200 apparently beats a Richland 8650D iGpu.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

GT4e should be much faster than that, if that gives us any idea.

Considering Richland is 3 years old that's hardly impressive...

 

[Enigmoid]

Considering Richland is 3 years old that's hardly impressive...

Iris 5200 itself is 2 years old.

 

[LTC8K6]

Thanks to the fast eDRAM memory, the average performance of the Iris Pro is only about 15 percent behind the dedicated mid-range cards GeForce GT 650M and GT 750M (DDR3 versions). This makes the Iris Pro even faster than AMDs Radeon HD 8650G and the fastest integrated GPU of 2013.

Probably the A10 Kaveri was the fastest iGpu of 2014, and it's not all that much faster than the Richland series.

Iris Pro 5200 already keeps up with the A10-7850K and the A8-7600:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7677/60871.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7677/60872.png

 

[Blue_Max]

A "new Iris Pro laptop" will cost 2 to 3 times as much as your "better value".

Which is why I said "an i3 + video card is the better value". Period. Eh? [nudge]

THEN I said I wouldn't mind a new laptop with the new Iris regardless of the value statement previously made... it'd be fairly close in performance to the "portable workstation" I'm lugging around now... (Hey, small price to pay to get triple the performance of HD4000 graphics and I picked it up super cheap!)

 

[frozentundra123456]

Probably the A10 Kaveri was the fastest iGpu of 2014, and it's not all that much faster than the Richland series.

Iris Pro 5200 already keeps up with the A10-7850K and the A8-7600:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7677/60871.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7677/60872.png

True, but you start to see the problem with the Iris Pro(faster than 7850k at performance settings but slower at quality settings). As you increase resolution or image quality, it scales worse than AMD igpu. Iris Pro is pretty good in artificial benchmarks or at low resolutions/detail settings, but they have a long way to go for 1080p, med to high, which is what I think we really need for a decent laptop. And remember, the chips in that test are desktop chips, 95 watt for 7850k, and I think 65 watts for the 4770R. So shrink that to a 35 to 40 watt laptop and it becomes considerably more difficult. I would be very happy with desktop 7770 performance in a 35 watt apu from either AMD or intel, and also improved cpu performance from AMD. I thought Intel would catch up by Skylake, but now I think we will not see this until 2017 (??) Zen apus if they are able to incorporate HBM.

 

[Mondozei]

Btw, if his needs are that simple, why not buy an APU? He'll get decent CPU performance, far better GPU performance than even iris pro, and for half the money.

Most APUs are very slow. Zen will likely change that but he doesn't want to wait that long.

Plus, he wants to have the flexibility to upgrade to a better GPU down the line and doesn't want to be bottlenecked. A decent Skylake CPU will have him covered basically for the rest of this decade considering how slow IPC gains are these days.

Edit:

So we can expect the best Iris Pro on the more expensive i5 models or is the best iGPU Intel has to offer only for i7?

 

[LTC8K6]

GT4e should fairly well kill IP 5200 performance-wise. I'd be shocked if it doesn't.

 

[Blue_Max]

GT4e should fairly well kill IP 5200 performance-wise. I'd be shocked if it doesn't.

Think it'll be restricted to only the expensive i7's though? I'd like to see it on a mainstream i5-k.

 

[MrTeal]

If each Skylake EU is similar in size to Boardwell, you're looking at 49mm^2 per 24 EU. That's ~150mm^2 for GT4e, plus the eDRAM. Considering that's almost as large on the 14nm node as the entire 177mm^2 GT2 Haswell die is on 22nm, I can't seen 4+4e being anything but expensive.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If each Skylake EU is similar in size to Boardwell, you're looking at 49mm^2 per 24 EU. That's ~150mm^2 for GT4e, plus the eDRAM. Considering that's almost as large on the 14nm node as the entire 177mm^2 GT2 Haswell die is on 22nm, I can't seen 4+4e being anything but expensive.

Dualcore Broadwell GT2 is 82mm2. GT3 is 133mm2. Thats 41mm2 and not 49mm2. 2 cores+L3 is around 25mm2.

So a theoretical Broadwell 4+4 with 72EUs would be ~199mm2.