Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics Review: Core i7-4950HQ Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:01 AM ESTThe Comparison Points
Intel sort of dropped this CRB off without anything to compare it to, so I scrambled over the past week looking for things to put Iris Pro’s performance in perspective. The obvious candidate was Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I expect its successor will use Iris Pro 5200, making this a perfect comparison point. The 15-inch rMBP is equipped with a GeForce GT 650M with a 900MHz core clock and a 5GHz memory datarate.
I also dusted off a GeForce GT 640 desktop card to shed a little more light on the 650M comparison. The 640 has a slightly higher core clock (925MHz) but it only has 1.7GHz DDR3, working out to be 27GB/s of memory bandwidth compared to 83GB/s for the 650M. Seeing how Iris Pro compares to the GT 640 and 650M will tell us just how good of a job Crystalwell is doing.
Next up is the desktop Core i7-4770K with HD 4600 graphics. This is a Haswell GT2 implementation, but at a much higher TDP than the 47W mobile part we’re comparing it to (84W). In a notebook you can expect a much bigger gap in performance between the HD 4600 and Iris Pro than what we’re showing here. Similarly I also included a 77W HD 4000 for a comparison to Ivy Bridge graphics.
On the AMD front I have the 35W A10-4600M (codename Trinity), featuring AMD’s 7660G processor graphics. I also included the 100W A10-5800 as a reference point since we were largely pleased with the GPU performance of Trinity on the desktop.
I listed TDPs with all of the parts I’m comparing here. In the case of the GT 640 I’m adding the TDP of the CPU (84W) and the GPU (65W). TDP is half of the story with Iris Pro, because the CPU, GPU and eDRAM all fit into the same 47W power envelope. With a discrete GPU, like the 650M, you end up with an extra 45W on top of the CPU’s TDP. In reality the host CPU won’t be running at anywhere near its 45W max in that case, so the power savings are likely not as great as you’d expect but they’ll still be present.
At the request of at least one very eager OEM, Intel is offering a higher-TDP configuration of the i7-4950HQ. Using Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) I was able to simulate this cTDP up configuration by increasing the sustained power limit to 55W, and moving the short term turbo power limit up to 69W. OEMs moving from a 2-chip CPU + GPU solution down to a single Iris Pro are encouraged to do the same as their existing thermal solutions should be more than adequate to cool a 55W part. I strongly suspect this is the configuration we’ll see in the next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
To remove as many bottlenecks as possible I configured all integrated GPU options (other than Iris Pro 5200) with the fastest supported memory. That worked out to being DDR3-2133 on desktop Trinity and desktop IVB, and DDR3-2400 on desktop Haswell (HD 4600). The mobile platforms, including Iris Pro 5200, all used DDR3-1600.
On the software side I used NVIDIA's GeForce R320 v320.18, AMD's Catalyst 13.6 beta and Intel's 9.18.10.3177 drivers with Crystalwell support.
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Phrontis - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
I can't wait for one on these on a mITX board such with 3 decent monitor outputs. Theres enough power for the sort of things I do if not for gaming.Phrontis
khanov - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Without a direct comparison between HD 5000/5100 and Iris Pro 5200 with Crystalwell,how can we conclude that Crystalwell has any effect in any of the game benchmarks? While it clearly is of benefit in some compute tasks, in the game benchmarks you only compare to HD 4600 with half as many EU's and to Nvidia and AMD with their different architectures.
We really need to see Iris Pro 5200 vs HD5100 to get an apples to apples comparison and be able to determine if Crystalwell is worth the extra money.
MODEL3 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Haswell ULT GT3 (Dual-Core+GT3) = 181mm2 and 40 EU Haswell GPU is 174mm^2.7mm^2 for everything else except GT3?
n13L5 - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link
" An Ultrabook SKU with Crystalwell would make a ton of sense, but given where Ultrabooks are headed (price-wise) I’m not sure Intel could get any takers."They sure seem to be going up in price, rather than down at the moment...
anandfan86 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Intel has once again made their naming so confusing that even their own marketing weasels can't get it right. Notice that the Intel slide titled "4th Gen Intel Core Processors H-Processors Line" calls the graphics in the i7-4950HQ and i7-4850HQ "Intel HD Graphics 5200" instead of the correct name which is "Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200". This slide calls the graphics in the i7-4750HQ "Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200" which indicates that the slide was made after the creation of that name. It is little wonder that most media outlets are acting as if the biggest tech news of the month is the new pastel color scheme in iOS 7.Myoozak - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
The peak theoretical GPU performance calculations shown are wrong for Intel's GFLOPS numbers. Correct numbers are half of what is shown. The reason is that Intel's execution units are made of of an integer vec4 processor and a floating-point vec4 processor. This article correctly states it has a 2xvec4 SIMD, but does not point out that half is integer and half is floating-point. For a GFLOPS computation, one should only include the floating-point operations, which means only half of that execution unit's silicon is getting used. The reported computation performance would only be correct if you had an algorithm with a perfect mix of integer & float math that could be co-issued. To compare apples to apples, you need to stick to GFLOPS numbers, and divide all the Intel numbers in the table by 2. For example, peak FP ops on the Intel HD4000 would be 8, not 16. Compared this way, Intel is not stomping all over AMD & nVidia for compute performance, but it does appear they are catching up.alexcyn - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
I heard that Intel 22nm process equals TSMS 26nm, so the difference is not that much.alexcyn - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
I heard that Intel 22nm process equals TSMC 26nm, so the difference is not that big.Doughboy(^_^) - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
I think Intel could push their yield way up by offering 32MB and 64MB versions of Crystalwell for i3 and i5 processors. They could charge the same markup for the 128, but sell the 32/64 for cheaper. It would cost Intel less and probably let them take even further market share from low-end dGPUs.krr711 - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
It is funny how a non-PC company changed the course of Intel forever for the good. I hope that Intel is wise enough to use this to spring-board the PC industry to a new, grand future. No more tick-tock nonsense arranged around sucking as many dollars out of the customer as possible, but give the world the processing power it craves and needs to solve the problems of tomorrow. Let this be your heritage and your profits will grow to unforeseen heights. Surprise us!