The Haswell Review: Intel Core i7-4770K & i5-4670K Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:00 AM ESTQuick Sync Performance
With more graphics EUs under the hood of all desktop Haswells (at least those launching today), Quick Sync performance improves a bit over Ivy Bridge. Intel claims to have focused heavily on improving the quality of Quick Sync transcodes however in my testing I saw a slight regression in quality. I didn’t have a ton of time to dig further to find out what’s going on but I plan on doing so post-Computex. Update: It looks like I wasn't alone in seeing an image quality regression. Haswell QSV image quality is worse than on IVB as Ganesh found.
The other big news is Handbrake now officially supports Quick Sync, something Ganesh will be testing with his HTPC look at Haswell.
Needless to say, Quick Sync performance is better on Haswell than on Ivy Bridge. And it’s even better if you happen to have a Haswell with a 128MB L4 cache.
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Khato - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Based on the published Haswell 4C GT2 die shot I believe that your estimates for the graphics area are quite high. It's relatively simple to derive the graphics area on 4C GT2 now that we know the total die size - should be somewhere in the vicinity of 58mm^2. Double that and you get 116mm^2 for GT3.As for the remaining 29mm^2 delta between 4C GT2 and 4C GT3 die sizes... I'd chalk that up to both inefficiencies due to going with a more square die instead of the long and skinny that's been with us since SNB and the extra logic/IOs necessary for the eDRAM L4.
Regardless, there's no question that the 174mm^2 figure for GT3 is incorrect as the 4 cores, associated L3, and system agent on the 4C GT2 die take up approximately 119mm^2, and adding 174mm^2 to that would yield a 293mm^2 die size.
Bobsama - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I too am on a Core i7-950. I bought it in April 2012. If this system died and I was building anew, I'd probably do it--I'd probably grab an i7-4770K. But for $500, notta chance!LeetMiniWheat - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Would have been nice to see some actual CPU-bound games, like Skyrim. Or something low res to take the load completely off the GPU.roltzje - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
It doesn't take a genius to figure whats going on here. Competition spurs innovation. There is no competition for mid-high end desktop processors, or even laptop processors really. AMD only keeps up with mid range because they have to set very high clocks on their inferior architecture.Where the competition is is in mobile. Smartphones and tablets. By moving Haswell down this generation, Intel is getting themselves closer to be a true competitor in that space. This year we should see a power and battery life combination that ARM cannot reach.
There are also huge gains for gaming and gaming laptops. A 14-15" mid-ranger cost $500 with Iris graphics should be able to run most games decently now without all-minimum settings. Especially given that the PS4 and XBO are running x86 low to mid range graphics, I can easily see Haswell notebooks keeping up, especially Iris pro laptops, which I would assume can come in under $1000 and in relatively slim form factors.
deepblue08 - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I think they should benchmarks this new CPU with 2-3GPUs. I don't think 1 video card is enough to really test the strength of new cpus, which is why the difference between ivy bridge and haswell is so small. Give them 2-3 GPUs to work with and see if they can really step-up.Yahma - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
YAWN... with no competition from AMD, Haswell offers none to just a few % improvement over the previous generation (depending on who's benchmarks you believe), higher power consumption, and fewer features (ie. no virtualization extensions on the higher end models) all at a higher price that requires one to purchase a new motherboard.... No Thanks!just4U - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
That was covered in a previous article.. it was established that the 3770K was the go to cpu for multiple video card systems. (altho.. I'd say this would do in a pinch as would the previous 2600/2700K)Yahma - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
YAWN... with no competition from AMD, Haswell offers none to just a few % improvement over the previous generation (depending on who's benchmarks you believe), higher power consumption, and fewer features (ie. no virtualization extensions on the higher end models) all at a higher price that requires one to purchase a new motherboard.... No Thanks!mcbowler - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
thanks for posting "CPU Performance: Going Even Further Back" almost twice as fast as my i5 750. I just might upgrade when the NCASE M1 is available.araczynski - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
either way, should be a serious boost in power to my aging E8500 :)