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Early Ivy Bridge Benchmark: Graphics Performance Greatly Improved

Posted by Unknown on from the improves-with-age dept.

The folks over at Anandtech managed to spend some time with early Ivy bridge production samples and perform a few benchmarks. The skinny: CPU performance is mildly increased as expected, but the GPU is 20-50% faster than the Sandy Bridge GPU. Power consumption is also down about 30W under full load. The graphics, however, are still slower than AMD's Llano (but the Ivy Bridge CPU beats the pants off of the Fusion's). Is the tradeoff worth it?

26 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Tradeoff? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It isn't meant to be powerful graphics. It isn't a "tradeoff". Intel's HD graphics are meant to be very low power, but competent enough to run basics, shiny OS features at least. That they do, and it sounds like IB is even better at that. But it isn't a "tradeoff" to get a good CPU with basic graphics that is called "normal". If you need good graphics discrete is still the way to go and there are plenty of reasonable options.

    From the look of it, Ivy Bridge is quite a win. Sandy Bridge, but a bit better. Nothing not to like there.

    1. Re:Tradeoff? by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      Thunderbolt will do this. There are prototype thunderbolt GPU enclosures out there now. We'll start seeing them soon, hopefully.

      --
      Good-bye
    2. Re:Tradeoff? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

      There have been a few stabs at it, I think both ATI and Nvidia have released more-or-less-orphaned-on-launch partnerships with some laptop outfit or other, using proprietary cabling.

      My understanding is that there are a few major hurdles:

      Historically, there really haven't been any good standardized high-bandwidth interfaces to the outside world on laptops. The proprietary docking station port, if provided, might connect directly to the PCI bus; but your next best bets were relatively lousy things like PCMCIA or USB. Even with PCIe, you get 1x from an expresscard slot; but the standards for external cabling for anything beefier than that have been languishing in the PCIe SIG forever...

      Unless you are content to use an external monitor only, an 'expansion GPU' both has to have access to all the usual bandwidth that a GPU requires and have enough bandwidth(and suitable software/firmware cooperation) to dump its framebuffer back to whatever internal GPU is driving the laptop screen. You can get(albeit at unattractive prices) enclosures that connect to the 1xPCIe lane in an expresscard slot and break that out into a mechanically 16xPCIe card enclosure with supplemental power. Assuming the BIOS isn't a clusterfuck, you can pop in an expansion card just as you would on a desktop. That only gets you the video outs, though, it doesn't solve the trickier and more system-specific problem of driving the laptop screen.

      Docking stations: At present, laptop manufacturers get to designate one line as 'enterprise' by including the necessary connector, and then charge a stiff fee for the proprietary docking station as your only option to drive a few extra heads. I imagine that this blunts the enthusiasm of the major enterprise laptop players for a well-standardized and high bandwidth external connector.

    3. Re:Tradeoff? by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      Thing is, many people like games. And games are demanding. Llano and brazos allow playing mainstream 3D (as in not angry birds/solitaire) games at low settings.
      Sandy/Ivy bridge and atom on the other hand are utterly useless for that. They can run aero and give very low end support to video decoding in hardware, and that's pretty much it.

      So if you're buying a machine where you intend to actually use that GPU for anything more graphically intensive then aero, intel is simply not an option unless you're also getting a discreet graphics card. So yes, it's a tradeoff, a very significant one for some and insignificant for others. It depends on needs of the user.

      A great example is my mom, who loves her atom netbook. She doesn't even run aero in w7. On the other hand, I have a brazos laptop that can run starcraft 2 on low/medium for several hours off battery, which is simply unmatched by any intel laptop on the market.

    4. Re:Tradeoff? by b0bby · · Score: 2

      My reading was that the tradeoff was between Intel's more powerful CPU/less powerful GPU, and AMD's more powerful GPU/less powerful CPU offerings. In that case there is a real tradeoff - you can't get both the more powerful CPU & GPU in one package.

    5. Re:Tradeoff? by TheNinjaroach · · Score: 2

      I thought the tradeoff mentioned in the summary was with regards to Intel vs AMD: You get better graphics with the integrated AMD Fusion chips, but poorer CPU performance.

      In other news, I bought one of the new AMD 6-core FX processors. Despite the miserable benchmarks, that thing feels faster than any other CPU I've had the privilege of using.

      --
      I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
    6. Re:Tradeoff? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But it IS a tradeoff Blanche, it is. You see most folks are embracing the wonder that is "The Internet" and all the TV movies and other entertainment that this wonderful medium has to offer and Intel GPUs...well they suck REALLY hard.

      But here is the dirty little secret AMD knows that Intel doesn't want you to hear, going so far as to shoot their Atom division in the face by killing off the Nvidia chipset business and hobbling Atom with insanely shitty rules like "Only 10 inches with crappy resolution" and "Only 2Gb of RAM" and the secret is this...Most folks simply aren't slamming even 5 year old chips hard enough to worry about, much less the newer ones. You see chips passed "Good enough" for the vast majority once we hit dual cores, so the fact that AMD's chips are 30% slower really doesn't matter if the user is only using less than half the power available anyway. And having that really nice GPU makes everything nice and smooth, with great HD video and even gaming if you so desire, although the majority isn't playing heavy CPU slamming games but crap like Farmville and Mob Wars

      This is why both my desktop and netbook are AMD and I sold my full size for the netbook because i found when I was mobile I simply wasn't hitting the CPU hard enough to matter. My Thuban X6 has OCing headroom up the wazoo should I ever need it but with most games barely hitting dual cores and transcoding on 6 cores being so sweet i doubt I'll need it and the E350? Man whomever designed that chip needs to be given a Corvette and a raise by AMD because that thing is bloody brilliant! 6 hours playing HD video at default voltages (BTW if you have an E or C series check out Brazos Tweaker as you can add 20%-30% battery life by using it) and the ability to just pop in an HDMI cable for full 1080p goodness, hell it even plays L4D, Bioshock II, and GTA:VC (I could play the newer GTA games but I don't care for them) and all while staying cool to the touch and quiet as a churchmouse. The OEMs have taken notice (now that Intel isn't bribing them not to anymore) and you can see everything from HTPCs to laptops and netbooks to all in ones and desktops running Brazos. In fact last time I walked into my local Walmart Supercenter there were only 2 Intel units, both of which were bottom o' the line Atoms, the rest of the store? All AMD Fusions. I've built several office boxes (the traditional stronghold of Intel) with the E350 and the employees just love them, whisper quiet while giving them plenty of power for their everyday tasks.

      Where Intel screwed the pooch was being too greedy. they SHOULD have made a deal with Nvidia to ensure plenty of new GPUs for their chips and instead they wiped out the entire Nvidia chipset business and made many of their chips simply overpriced and underperforming, especially in the laptop arena where you can't add a discrete. ION and Optimus was the perfect answer, with the low power shitty Intel chip for when you were on battery and the Nvidia chip when you were plugged in but now that the option is gone frankly I wouldn't touch Intel on a mobile unless it had a discrete and i warn my customers of the same. As we get more and more multimedia heavy folks want good graphics with smooth video and nice gaming and intel just don't have that. You can buy an AMD A series for probably half of what this chip is gonna cost, an E series for like one fifth, and while you won't notice the CPU unless you are doing number crunching or some other task one doesn't do on a mobile often you WILL notice the much nicer graphics. Intel just went the wrong direction on this IMHO and will pay the price.

      --
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    7. Re:Tradeoff? by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 2

      Seriously, there is no reason at all to go amd right now.

      I went AMD very recently when building a cheap home server, because AMD motherboards tend to have higher SATA port counts on consumer level hardware. They also don't make a habit of over-zealously disabling key features from the CPU like Intel does to differentiate their pricing structure (the lack of VT-X bit me pretty hard when my P7450 laptop arrived, and Intel documentation hadn't been released indicating the lack of VT-X at the time I purchased it). The Intel CPUs are faster, but that didn't mean much to me when the motherboard only has 2 SATA3 ports, and 2 maybe 4 SATA2 ports.

  2. But still slower then a "real" video card... by Kenja · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Frankly, I am sick and tired of these integrated GPUs. The theory is that its a cost saver, but since I just put in a dedicated graphics card it ends up being a cost with no benefit. Ah well.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by tepples · · Score: 2

      People who don't use a computer other than for homework and Facebook don't feel the need to put in a dedicated graphics card. As I understand it, as long as Office and YouTube work, non-gamers and console gamers are perfectly fine if a computer's 3D capability is comparable to a Voodoo3 from over a decade ago.

    2. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 2

      These are a hell of a lot better than that. They aren't good, but they will manage to play skyrim for example (albeit at a relatively low resolution for a decent framerate). http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k/15

      These are probably the wrong direction for the product though. They don't viably compete with a discrete GPU, so people who can, would rather not have to buy an integrated GPU at all, and for business it's so powerful it's letting employees game on work computers, which isn't good.

      On the other hand, for the home user market, it's good enough that people can do whatever they want on the machines and they'll manage.

    3. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by halfEvilTech · · Score: 2

      The sad thing though is that us gamers/enthusiasts are basically paying for a GPU we'll never use. It would be nice if these CPUs were sold also without an integrated GPU.

      They actually do exist, check out the Core i5 2550 for example. It has a higher clock than the 2500 for the same price. The difference is they removed the iGPU from the chip.

    4. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by Bengie · · Score: 2

      Having a graphics card integrated into the CPU is only one benefit. The future benefit is using the GPU as a co-CPU. AMD already has plans for the IGP to understand context switching and respect protected memory.

      Some people say "why, the IGP is slower than discrete". But no one thinks, ohh, the IGP has 2-3 magnitudes less latency than a discrete GPU while being less than 1 magnitude slower.

      Think of future multimedia where the CPU and IGP ping-pong data back and forth. I like to think of what kind of physics game may have once IGPs become easy to program. CPU->GPU->CPU->GPU is really slow when you're talking about microseconds round trips each hop. CPU->IGP->CPU->GPU is much faster when latency between the CPU and IGP is in nanoseconds. It may possibly even get streamlined to CPU->IGP->GPU, depending on future algorithms and engine designs.

    5. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by timeOday · · Score: 2

      You can get a $40 card that will outperform the onboard.

      True yesterday, false today:

      Based on what we've seen, discrete GPUs below the $50 - $60 mark don't make sense if you've got Intel's HD 4000 inside your system. The discrete market above $100 remains fairly safe however.

    6. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would like to see the ability to use the integrated GPU, even if not for graphics. The traditional CPU is good for sequential logic. But for pattern recognition, physics simulations (which is basically what 3d graphics is), encoding, or code-cracking (e.g. bitcoin), the highly parallel structure of the GPU is better. Now you might argue, my offboard GPU is still the same thing, but better. OK. But these are inherently parallel tasks, so if you could use the one built-in AND the add-on, you wouldn't be wasting anything.

    7. Re:But still slower then a "real" video card... by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Look at the die layout for Sandy Bridge, there's no Ivy Bridge layout yet but it's probably the same. You see that huge chunk called "graphics"? Me neither, it's somewhere in those small "misc io" bits. That's the only little thing of your CPU you aren't using with a dGPU.

      I guess that's simply a chip without an integrated GPU. Here's a picture of a Sandy Bridge Core i7 with GPU.

      --
      Donate free food here
  3. Depends on what you mean by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    So basically all laptops that have discrete graphics have it socketed in an nVidia MXM slot. Way cheaper to have one board and just knock cards on it for the manufacturers. However the thing is that since it is for OEMs and not consumers, it isn't as easy to swap as a PCI card. It is all on you to make sure the card you are getting is physically the right size, electrically something you system can handle, and thermally not to much.

    Also pretty much only Sager actually supports doing it, and other laptop manufacturer will tell you to GTFO if you ask them about it. As such even finding the parts isn't easy.

    With laptops you don't really upgrade much other than maybe the RAM or disk.

    However the IB will be useful in laptops not only because it can give better performance for integrated only systems, but it'll be nice for switchable ones. You can get ATi card systems where you can manually switch between discrete and integrated and nVidia ones that do it on the fly. Better integrated graphics means you can use them for more things, so when on battery it is more feasible to use them and leave the discrete system shut down.

    However note this wasn't a laptop part they are talking about, this is the desktop part.

  4. Doesn't cost much by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    And there is a lot of use for them.

    In terms of desktop chips it is for low end use. A lot of people just do web/e-mail/word with their systems and an Intel HD graphics setup is perfect for them. It is plenty of power to do the shiny OS interface, accelerate video, and so on, and comes with the system.

    In terms of laptop chips, you really always want it on account of switchable graphics. If your laptop has switchable graphics it can use the integrated for low power consumption and only kick on the discrete when needed. For ATi cards it is a bit clunky, you have to actually manually switch it, but you can do that just use integrated on battery, discrete on power. For nVidia they have a thing called Optimus where it all happens in realtime without you noticing. You'll be on integrated on the desktop then you fire up something intensive and it switches over seamlessly.

    Regardless, they are widely used and so worth including. It would cost more for Intel to make a second variant of the chip without them.

  5. Re:GPU performance always wins by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Interesting

    True but integrated is getting better. At this point the budget nVidia and AMD discrete cards are slightly better than Intel but IMO not worth the $50 for the slight upgrade. You are better off spending a little more and moving towards mid-range for a lot more performance.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  6. Re:GPU Performance by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The main reason that integrated GPU performance matters(aside from the fact that it is all the GPU you get in any too-cheap or too-skinny device that doesn't have a discrete option) is that it defines the (overwhelmingly common) baseline for what 'PC graphics' means. If that situation is uniformly awful, GPU intensive stuff will continue to be fairly niche, which leads to a chicken-and-egg issue: if integrated graphics suck, the market for GPU intensive stuff will be constrained, which will reduce the incentive to improve GPU performance, and so it goes...

  7. Re:GPU Performance by imbusy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The beauty of having an on-chip GPU is that you don't have to move data around to do computations with OpenCL. It's something that kills the benefits of using a dedicated graphics cards for almost every GPGPU application. The 10-100x speed-ups are a lie.

  8. Re:GPU Performance by oakgrove · · Score: 2

    It depends. Some of the most popular games in the world think World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc. run well on good enough integrated graphics a lot of laptops come with. The AMD stuff does work better than the intel stuff though by a long shot.

    --
    The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
  9. Llano by zigfreed · · Score: 2

    The CPU in Llano is 2 generations back... with Athlon II. Beating the pants off Bulldozer is easy for Intel: just find a benchmark optimized for single threads, compiled with ICC, or weights the single threaded result. One of the major new features, the random number generator, wasn't even tested. Monte Carlo benchmarks, where are you?

  10. Re:Ivy bridge vs ARM by armanox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As soon as ARM tries to catch up to the performance of x86 (and x64) it no longer has the lower power consumption.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  11. Not anymore by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    Crack them open some time. Slots are the big thing since it keeps production costs down.

  12. Re:GPU Performance by Ambassador+Kosh · · Score: 2

    The AMD llano chips are better then just competent for MMO games. A laptop llano chip will run EQ1, EQ2, WoW, The Old Republic etc without any discrete GPU.
    They even handle things like Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas + lots of mods without needing a discrete card.

    The llano chips also do GPGPU without crushing your battery power. So if you are on battery power you can do calculations hundreds of times faster then an intel chip can if you can do GPGPU and not kill your battery doing it.

    For me I run into more and more things where the CPU is good enough but more GPU power would be better. For me llano hit a great sweet spot for a laptop.

    --
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