Haswell Countdown

[Bokishi]

Haswell is scheduled to arrive in June 3 or 3,337,200,000,000,000 nanoseconds! They said stay tuned to their news room for more info

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom

 

The LGA 1150 DZ87KL-75K is currently the only confirmed mobo that will run it

http://www.eteknix.com/intels-top-z87-haswell-motherboard-pictured/

 

Leaked pricing chart

Edited April 27, 2013 by Bokishi

[Humanoid]

Still happy enough with how my Lynnfield does, though USB3/SATA3 would be nice, so no desktop upgrades (storage aside) until Broadwell at the earliest for me. Will pretty much jump on a Haswell notebook near launch though, current one is near death, or indeed possibly undead.

 

Intel's naming conventions getting worse with every gen once again, a shame after the relatively straightforward Sandy.

[samm]

 

 

no desktop upgrades (storage aside) until Broadwell at the earliest for me

Skylake it will be then, because there won't be any desktop Broadwell parts As far as I'm informed at least.

[Humanoid]

Haven't really kept up with the rumours but is that related to the mooted switch to BGA (soldered on CPUs) for desktops or a different rumour altogether?

 

 

Aside, my "no new desktop CPU" statement is a bit of a lie because technically I'm still interested in building a new mini ITX system as a side-project, it's just that it's probably going to be a Richland-based system.

[Gorgon]

What's different this time. It's usually minor architecture stuff that doesn't ammount to much of anything, blame the lack of a serious competitor.

[Humanoid]

Significant integrated graphics performance boost, though only in a few selected models (four tiers of integrated graphics for this gen, just to add to the confusion), and some good power efficiency gains in the mobile models. Actual CPU performance gains will be modest, in the single digits percentagewise clock-for-clock, and clock speeds will be overall similar to Ivy. It's a "tock" in Intel's schedule and therefore is on the same process as Ivy but with with a largely new design (compared to Ivy being a "tick", a process shrink without much else).

 

Desktop Ivy chips had an annoying design where, breaking from tradition, they no longer soldered the die to the heatspreader, resulting in a big hit to the clock ceiling. Curious whether that'll continue.

 

There would also be some appeal, if the rumours are true, in Haswell possibly being the last Intel platform to support drop-in CPU upgrades, the word being that future CPUs will be soldered onto the motherboard and sold as complete, non-upgradable units that way.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Humanoid

[LadyCrimson]

It doesn't sound like anything I'd be excited about, in terms of price vs. (desktop) performance.

 

There would also be some appeal, if the rumours are true, in Haswell possibly being the last Intel platform to support drop-in CPU upgrades, the word being that future CPUs will be soldered onto the motherboard and sold as complete, non-upgradable units that way.

Really? That would ... suck ... so I'll hope it's a rumor that proves unfounded. Not that I often drop-in upgrade CPU's anyway (vs. just building a completely new rig), but that's not the point. If it seems like that's the way it's going to go, I may build a new rig sooner than I thought I would. And buy a garage full of spare parts.

[Gorth]

...on the other hand, in the last decade and a half, I've never upgraded RAM or CPU, but tossed it all out and got new MB, CPU and RAM together. Maybe because I keep my PC's for a very long time (past the point obsolescence)?

[Gorgon]

Probably motivated by some nefarious market mechanism. I don't imagine there is much board manufacurers would not agree to if the alternative was to be cut off from Intel processors.

[Humanoid]

It's sort of a natural continuation of when they initially switched from the traditional PGA-system CPU-with-pins to the LGA socket-with-pins, back in the P4 days. That move was taken as a cynical one to move responsibility for bent/broken pins away from Intel and to the motherboard vendors instead. With soldered on CPUs, they can move the entire burden to the mobo vendors and not have to deal with the end-user themselves.

[Bokishi]

That move makes sense, seeing that all the new "tock" CPUs need new motherboards anyway. I guess the only problem is if the CPU is defective (or destroyed by overclocking), you have to tear apart the whole computer and rip out the motherboard, rather than just pop in a new processor

[Gorgon]

Making overclocking harder, well riskier anyway, will also make it easier to get away with selling more or less the same chip but either over or underclocked to meet different price ranges.

[LadyCrimson]

That move makes sense, seeing that all the new "tock" CPUs need new motherboards anyway. I guess the only problem is if the CPU is defective (or destroyed by overclocking), you have to tear apart the whole computer and rip out the motherboard, rather than just pop in a new processor

The motherboard could also fry (or connectors break, or whatever), meaning you'd have to replace a potentially still-working CPU, not just the motherboard.

 

Not something that happens to many people I suppose, but it's still annoying to me that if one thing goes, you'd have to replace the whole "unit." I don't think that makes sense at all ... unless the "unit" ends up being cheaper than buying those things separately has been, so you no longer care too much that you're paying for some aspect that isn't actually broken. But then, I'm still annoyed by how difficult it's become to just replace a part in anything vs. buying a whole new "unit." Disposable and more disposable.

[samm]

I'd prefer a high-end motherboard (and PSU, but that's beside the point) with a mid-range CPU, if I wouldn't have enough money at my hands for an overall high-end-system. I'd also prefer to have a cheap CPU as a backup should the original fry. Overall, I like to be able to select and combine my computer's components freely, and using BGA in desktop computers would take such freedom away.

 

There is however one big reason, besides Intel's cynicism, why we'll end up with this sooner or later: With stacked RAM and more and more SOC qualities that the component formerly known as CPU acquires, comes an ever increasing difficulty to maintain signal quality and bandwidth over the comparatively large area of a motherboard. There won't be too much choice in the future, I'm afraid.

 

 

 

Aside, my "no new desktop CPU" statement is a bit of a lie because technically I'm still interested in building a new mini ITX system as a side-project, it's just that it's probably going to be a Richland-based system.

Yep, Richland certainly will be a nice choice for that. With a good motherboard you'll even have plenty of SATA 6Gbps and USB 3 ports to build a very well performing file/media server, should the HTPC ever prove to be rarely used as a home theatre  Unfortunately, at the moment I can only find one FM2 Mini ITX mainboard with A85X chipset, I don't know about the market where you're from, but in Europe, there's not much choice...

Edited April 30, 2013 by samm

[samm]

Oh, and if anyone is planning to buy a Haswell: Please do so with a retail motherboard and do not get any OEM manufacured PCs, unless you don't care for USB problems. Reason: http://techreport.com/news/24494/report-new-chipset-revision-to-fix-haswell-usb-3-0-bug

Also, you'll probably need a new PSU, and with new, I don't mean recent, but rather still-to-be-built for Haswell compatibility: http://techreport.com/news/24738/few-psus-support-haswell-c6-c7-low-power-states

 

Oh Intel, what a capable company you are... Remeber the SATA-port-issues at Sandy Bridge release? They don't seem to have learnt from their past mistakes. Not that they have to, the consumers still happily buy their products and their image stays unblemished.

[Bokishi]

That doesn't sound good lol

[Humanoid]

Doesn't sound like the PSU thing is a big deal, there's just new power-saving functionality which will require a compatible PSU to operate, otherwise it'll function like the previous gen in this regard.

 

The USB3.0 issue is a real one though, and while significantly less bad than the Cougar Point chipset issue when Sandy launched, it's irritating that defective hardware is being launched at all. For what it's worth I actually do still run one of those faulty Cougar Point H67 motherboards, was too lazy to send it back interstate.

[rjshae]

Do we know how good that GPU capability will be? Is it intended to supplement a graphics board, or replace it? (Sorry, I'm not much of a hardware guy.)

[samm]

Intel claims that its fastest version of the "GT3" graphics, aka "Iris Pro 5200", available in Ultrabook processors and some select other ones, will reach a Geforce GT 640. Realistically, we can expect maybe GT 630 level of performace of the fastest solution. Keep in mind that there will be 3 other versions of the IGP, plus probably different clock rates, so all in all:

 

It will be okay-ish to play entry level games at low settings. Its faster versions will quite possibly get up to the performance level of AMD's integrated GPUs, but unlike those, you won't be able to supplement a discrete GPU*. If it can replace one depends on your expectations in terms of performance and drivers.

 

 

 

*: not that I'd advise to use this asymetrical Crossfire, it's bound to be microstuttering from hell. I'd keep away from using multi-GPU setups for the time being anyway, until there is a way to properly use them like one GPU. Let's see if further levels of HSA technology will enable such a thing.

Edited May 3, 2013 by samm

[Humanoid]

Slight nitpick, but the highest level graphics "Iris Pro" is codenamed GT3e and will not be available in Ultrabooks. Further, for desktop, it'll only be available in the BGA-form 'R' series CPUs - so yes, that soldered CPU thing has begun. You actually have to make sacrifices in CPU performance too: 'R' series CPUs are clocked lower than the regular and 'K' offerings which have more modest graphics performance. It's likely the primary target for Iris Pro on desktop then is the all-in-one market, particularly the iMac. Wikipedia, I know, I know. Check out the table at the top of this thread - all those CPUs, the baseline series and the gamer-targetted 'K' series all only come with GT2 HD4600 graphics.

 

In typical dodgy Intel naming fashion, 'plain' GT3 can either be 'Iris 5100' or 'HD 5000', depending on TDP. These will the the ones you see in 'U' series Ultrabook CPUs, sensibly the thirstier GT3e Iris Pro will only be available in high-end 'regular' quad-core mobile CPUs. (Looking at the charts provided by Intel, it's running up to 55W, so almost desktop-level consumption)

Edited May 4, 2013 by Humanoid

[samm]

Thanks for the corrections regarding ultrabooks and the clarifications regarding the 'R' series

[Humanoid]

Aaand, it's here. No surprises really.

[Bokishi]

I usually don't consider upgrading until I see gains of 50-100%. With only 20% (at most!) from what I have now, means ill probably be sticking with sandy for another year or so

[Keyrock]

From everything I've read, Haswell should be great for mobile because of massive power efficiency gains, but pretty much a non-upgrade (minimal gains) over Ivy Bridge or even Sandy Bridge on the desktop front, especially considering that it once again requires a new socket.  It's too bad AMD's CPUs are so far behind Intel, because they at least stick with a socket for a good long time, making upgrading a much cheaper matter.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Keyrock

[samm]

Well, they're not actually behind. At least in mobile space they've been competitive in power use, computation and, up until Haswell's highest end IGP, graphics performance as well as price from the very lowest performance point to midrange for quite some time. The OEMs just offered mostly crippled mobile units if any at all - not least because of the lack of guidelines from AMD (meaningful guidelines would have been: mandatory dual channel RAM, DDR3 1600 or faster, for everything not Brazos / Jaguar; Brazos / Jaguar only in small mobile platforms; battery capacity minimal boundaries; no dual graphics; using at least midrange chipsets with native USB3/SATA 6Gbps support and recommend usage of SSDs; higher res monitors)

 

It's too bad AMD's CPUs are so far behind Intel, because they at least stick with a socket for a good long time, making upgrading a much cheaper matter.

Edited June 4, 2013 by samm