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.
Intel's top Atom chips have a 10W TDP. Of course the chipset/RAM also play a large factor, but still -- this is an amazingly frugal CPU
Because most PC's sold use integrated graphics, traditionally they have been abysmal. In the last few years seemly pushed by AMD they have been looking to correct that.
No sir I dont like it.
Intel's Statement was that it could produce similar results as Ivy Bridge at half the power consumption OR around twice the power at the same power consumption as Ivy Bridge's built in chip.
Which is still pretty good all considered.
The integrated graphics are still crap.
The thermal overhead added to the CPU die limits the amount of computational power they can realistically add. Not to mention that on enthusiast systems it creates needless waste heat that could be better spent on CPU cycles. (Supposedly we'll see some tightly integrated cpu+gpu systems with shared memory space and registers and whatnot.. But we're far away from that, as it presents a large departure from traditional PC architecture, let alone x86 arch. AMD is way ahead on this path though, and it may pay off for them in the future.)
Above aside, the real elephant in the room comes down to memory speed. GPUs need memory bandwidth. Lots of it. GPU speed scales with memory bandwidth to the point that it's pretty much the most significant metric that separates price tiers in the traditional GPU card market. GPUs are supposed to have fast, high clocked, tightly integrated memory subsystems using exotic high speed memory types explicitly designed to directly coupled to GPU chips, for their exclusive use.(GDDR3, GDDR5, etc)
These cpu-gpus have to make due with the plain old low bandwidth narrow bus main memory in your system. And they have to share that bandwidth with the rest of the system. GPUs are so memory speed sensitive that you can see drastic differences in performance on the AMD chips simply by getting faster main memory modules. Overclocking your memory yields even more improvement - But that's the thing. All of these solutions are budget oriented, so they'll be saddled with slow and cheap memory to begin with.
You know the xbox? It's got shared memory. How to they get fast performance? ALL of the system's main memory hangs off the GPU. It's ALL GDDR3. They can do this sort of unified memory arch because it's a special custom designed system.
Until the memory bandwidth issue is solved the integrated GPUs will continue to be crap.
When you consider that the x86 uses 3x the power, but can run a benchmark such as multithreaded linpack 1000x faster, it suddenly seems like we're getting ripped off by these ARM processors.
In reality, this processor consumes 20x less (I assume that means 1/20th) power of the current Ivy Bridges. I presume that's under normal use. It's a huge win for laptops.
1) Using integrated graphics for gaming if you are concerned about framerates is just dumb.
2) 1/3 the TDP is the difference between a battery with power and one without.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
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.
It's official. Intel on-board video is all you'll ever need for home and general office use. I'm not talking about "getting by" performance. I'm talking about full 2D hyper smooth animation, fading, and alpha blending. I've seen both Ubuntu, Windows 7, and Windows 8 using on-board. It doesn't bat an eyelash. No pausing or hiccups. Flash animation couldn't be more smooth too.
About the only reason you wouldn't use on-board video is if you must run Adobe product that calls for GPU acceleration or you're a gamer.
nVidia knows this too. As you can see, they've been focusing in on advanced 3D gaming and super computing. It won't be long before nVidia turns into the next "SGI" where only high-end is their focus. To the point where even they start losing the consumer market and only focus on business-to-business solutions and other vertical market applications.
Life is not for the lazy.
"The integrated graphics are still crap."
Depends what for, really... Office, web and HD video? Nope, they're pretty good at that - so good, in fact, that I don't buy machines with dedicated graphics cards unless I'm planning on playing games or running applications that specifically require a fast GPU.
Even the HD3000 or HD4000 (Sandy and Ivy Bridge, respectively) graphics included with the last and current generations of Intel Core iX CPUs are overkill for most people - even a 4500MHD (Core 2 Duo 2nd generation) had perfect support for 1080p acceleration and ran Windows 7 at full tilt with all the bells and whistles, if you wanted those. What more do you want from integrated graphics?
The fact that I can even play Starcraft II on low at 1080p on a Core i3 with the integrated HD3000 at acceptable framerates is just icing on the cake...
Oh and have I mentioned the sub-5W total system power consumption on a 15.6" laptop with a standard voltage CPU? THAT is what integrated graphics are for. If you're looking to do gaming or CAD or use the GPU for computationally intensive tasks, you're not in the target audience...
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.
The GMA500 disaster showed how much Intel cares for end users after selling them the hardware.
GMA500 = rebranded PowerVR SGX 535. The graphics Intel develops themselves isn't for serious gamers but it's improved leaps and bounds over the last couple years. You're of course free to be unhappy about the Poulsbo and with good reason, but most people with a recent Intel IGP are very happy and the sales of discrete cards only goes one way, down.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings