Mobile Ivy Bridge and ASUS N56VM Preview

Mobile Ivy Bridge Lineup and New Chipsets

Similar to the Sandy Bridge rollout, Intel is starting at the high-end with Ivy Bridge and will work its way down from here. All told there are six new mobile Ivy Bridge processors launching today: one Extreme Edition, two consumer i7 models, and three OEM i7 models. You’ll note that there are currently no announced Core i3, Core i5, or Pentium processors; those will come later (though leaked information already gives a hint of what’s to come). Here’s the full rundown of the current mobile Ivy Bridge CPUs, all of which will be quad-core:

Intel typically has several parts intended for OEMs along with the other retail products, and they don’t disclose pricing on the OEM parts. We’ve broken things down with the retail SKUs in the top table and the OEM versions in the second table. As usual there’s the obligatory Extreme Edition i7-3920XM, with the most extreme part being the price. For roughly twice the cost of the i7-3820QM, you get an extra 100MHz on the CPU side and 50MHz on the GPU, plus a 55W TDP. (You also get a fully unlocked multiplier, though I’m not convinced that’s super useful for notebooks.) The other two retail parts are likewise separated by 100MHz on the CPU clocks, but the 3720QM also cuts the L3 cache down to 6MB.

Move to the OEM parts and the story is again similar to what we saw with the Sandy Bridge launch, only with a few extra parts out of the gates. The i7-3615QM drops down another 300MHz from the 3720QM, and the GPU clock also drops 50MHz. The 3610QM is basically the same part but with a different package and a lower maximum GPU clock. Rounding things out, the i7-3612QM actually looks quite interesting; it’s clocked 200-300MHz slower than the other two parts, but it also drops the TDP to 35W—the first time we’ve seen Intel do a 35W TDP quad-core CPU. Of course TDP isn’t everything, but if it means better battery life without sacrificing the extra cores it should garner quite a few followers. With Sandy Bridge the i7-2630QM was very popular among OEMs, and the i7-361xQM models should follow suit.

Compared to the initial launch of Sandy Bridge, the quad-core Ivy Bridge parts are clocked on average 300-400MHz higher, but relative to the refreshed Sandy Bridge lineup Ivy Bridge only nets you an extra 100-200MHz (e.g. the 2760QM has a base clock of 2.4GHz and a max turbo of 3.5GHz—200MHz higher than the original i7-2720QM). Architecturally, we’ve discussed elsewhere what has and hasn’t changed; the short summary is that you get potentially better power and efficiency, slightly improved IPC (instructions per clock), some security changes, and a few new instructions. Most of these changes won’t have an immediate impact on performance, and very likely a large number of users won’t notice their presence (or lack if you stick with Sandy Bridge or another CPU). The real change is on the graphics side, and as we’ll see in a moment the change is significant.

New Mobile Chipsets

Along with the new CPUs, Intel will be launching some new chipsets. We’ve discussed the chipsets previously, but here’s a short table and overview:

For most of our readers, HM77 is going to be the desired chipset, as it includes four USB 3.0 ports and Intel’s Smart Response Technology—the use of a small SSD as a caching device to improve overall performance without giving up the storage capacity of using a hard drive. Value-oriented laptops on the other hand will go with the HM75 and HM76 to help keep costs down. The Q-series chipsets are primarily focused on business laptops, while the UM77 will be for the ultrabook/ultraportable market. Besides the above features, all of the 7-series chipsets support Intel’s Anti-Theft Technology (the ability to remotely lock a laptop if it’s stolen), Wireless Display (WiDi—you’ll need an adapter on the display side as well), and up to three simultaneous displays (up from two displays in Sandy Bridge/6-series chipsets).