Intel Haswell CPUs Debut, Put To the Test

jjslash writes "Intel's Haswell architecture is finally available in the flagship Core i7-4770K and Core i7-4950HQ processors. This is a very volatile time for Intel. In an ARM-less vacuum, Intel's Haswell architecture would likely be the most amazing thing to happen to the tech industry in years. Haswell mobile processors are slated to bring about the single largest improvement in battery life in Intel history. In graphics, Haswell completely redefines the expectations for processor graphics. On the desktop however, Haswell is just a bit more efficient, but no longer much faster when going from one generation to another." Reader wesbascas puts some numbers on what "just a bit" means here: "Just as leaked copies of the chip have already shown, the i7-4770K only presents an incremental ~10% performance increase over the Ivy Bridge-based Core i7-3770K. Overclocking potential also remains in the same 4.3 GHz to 4.6 GHz ballpark."

Comments

Re:Graphics..

[timeOday]

You must have said that before looking at the benchmarks? Looks to me like AMD is toast. Intel's integrated graphics beat AMD's on every game in the AnandTech test.

The new Intel even beats the discrete mobile GPU (Geforce GT 650M) on a couple tests. On most the Intel is somewhat slower but using around half the power.

Re:Need to wait a few years

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely the most overlooked aspect of Haswell. As an incremental improvement, its less than stellar, but in certain areas, it effectively doubles performance over the previous generation. Aside from FMA for floating point apps, the integer 256bit SIMD pipeline is now effectively feature complete.

Your point about waiting for recompiles is a good one - all the more reason we should be moving to adaptable metaprogramming systems for HPC, rather than a constant manual reworking of codebases. Projects like Terra (http://terralang.org) are particularly promising in this regard

Depends on your field

[Frobnicator]

If all you care about is the perspective of the boring desktop business app, then this processor doesn't have much to excite you. Of course, that's just one field. Sending a few database queries over the wire or updating your text boxes doesn't exactly saturate a quad-core box. Business desktop apps don't really see much no matter what.

For data-heavy, cache-intensive, and parallel-intensive programs the processor looks to offer quite a lot. HPC developers like that.

For notebooks and low-power devices the processor is wonderful. If you are paying the power bill for a data center, the energy use will add up. Accountants and laptop users will like that.

The option to have graphics integrated to the chip this way means better SOC options. Embedded developers will like that.

Many fields will see great things out of this chip.

If you are fixated on the world of desktop business software, you still get an incremental ~10% improvement. Unlike technologies such as SIMD, you get it without changing a line of code. So now you can add 10% more text boxes to fill out, or maybe pick up some more wasteful coding habits.