Slashdot Mirror
Intel Unveils 10-Watt Haswell Chip
adeelarshad82 writes "At IDF, Intel announced the company's fourth-generation Core processor code-named Haswell. The chip is based off of the same 22nm process used in the current third-generation Core products. What makes this chip remarkably different from the third-generation chips is its ability to product twice the graphic capabilities at a much lower power consumption, which Intel has achieved by making use of a number of tactics."
HotHardware has video of Haswell running a 3D benchmark.
According to anandtech.com, the '20x lower power' statistic is only a reference to the chip's idle power state, not while it's under any sort of processing load.
My 2-year old laptop has an nVidia GT 330M. At the time it was a mid-range dedicated mobile 3D video card.
Ivy Bridge's HD4000 comes very close to matching its performance while burning a helluva lot less power. So the delta between mid-grade dedicated video and integrated video performance is down to a little over 2 years now. Intel claims Haswell's 3D video is twice as fast as HD4000. If true, that would put it near the performance of the GT 640M, and lower the delta to a bit over 1 year.
This is all the more impressive if you remember that integrated video is hobbled by having to mooch off of system memory. If there were some way to give the HD4000 dedicated VRAM, then you'd have a fairer apples to apples comparison of just how good the chipset's engineering and design are compared to the dedicated offerings of nVidia and AMD.
I used to be a hardcore gamer in my youth, but life and work have caught up and I only game casually now. If Haswell pans out, its integrated 3D should be plenty enough for my needs. It may be "crap" to the hardcore gamer, but they haven't figured out yet that in the grand scheme of things, being able to play video games with all the graphics on max is a pretty low priority.