GRID 2

GRID 2 is a new addition to our suite and our new racing game of choice, being the very latest racing game out of genre specialty developer Codemasters. Intel did a lot of publicized work with the developer on this title creating a high performance implementation of Order Independent Transparency for Haswell, so I expected it to be well optimized. I ran out of time in testing this one and couldn't include all of the parts here. I did use GRID 2 as an opportunity to look at the impact of MSAA on Iris Pro's performance.

GRID 2

Without AA, Iris Pro does well, with the 650M pulling ahead by low double digits. Mobile Trinity is roughly half the speed of Iris, with desktop Trinity bridging the gap.

GRID 2

Turn up the resolution, add AA, and NVIDIA pulls ahead by a large margin. The desktop Trinity part also inches ahead.

GRID 2

Ramp up the quality settings however and Iris Pro ends up ahead of the GT 650M. Desktop Trinity falls behind considerably, likely running into memory bandwidth limitations. Crystalwell seems to save Iris Pro here.

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  • jasonelmore - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link

    Looking at the prices, this will raise the price or Lower the margins of the 13" Retina Macbook Pro by about $150 each.
  • mschira - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link

    Yea laptops benefit most - good for them.
    But what about the workstation?
    So intel stopped being a CPU company and turned into a mediocre GPU company? (can even beat last years GT650M)
    I would applaude the rise in GPU performance if they had not completely forgotten the CPU.
    M.
  • n13L5 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    You're exactly right.

    13" ultrabook buyers who need it the most get little to nothing out of this.

    And desktop users don't need or want GT3e and it uses system RAM. Better off buying a graphics card instead of upgrading to Haswell on desktops.
  • glugglug - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    While I agree this misses "where it would benefit most", I disagree on just *where* that is.

    I guess Intel agrees with Microsofts implicit decision that media center is dead. Real-time HQ quicksync would be perfect to transcode anything extenders couldn't handle, and would also make the scanning for and skipping of commercials incredibly efficient.
  • n13L5 - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    Core i5…4350U…Iris 5000…15W…1.5 GHz
    Core i7…4550U…Iris 5000…15W…1.5 GHz
    Core i7…4650U…Iris 5000…15W…1.7 GHz

    These should work. The 4650U is available in the Sony Duo 13 as we speak, though at a hefty price tag of $1,969
  • Eric S - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link

    The last 13" looks like they were prepping it for a fusion drive then changed their mind leaving extra space in the enclosure. I think it is due for an internal redesign that could allow for a higher wattage processor.

    I think the big deal is the OpenCL performance paired with ECC memory for the GPU. The Nvidia discrete processor uses non-ECC GDDR. This will be a big deal for users of Adobe products. Among other things, this solves the issue of using the Adobe mercury engine with non-ECC memory and the resulting single byte errors in the output. The errors are not a big deal for games, but may not be ideal for rendering professional output and scientific applications. This is basically a mobile AMD FireGL or Nvidia Quadro card. Now we just need OpenCL support for the currently CUDA-based mercury engines in After Effects and Premiere. I have a feeling that is coming or Adobe will also lose Mercury Engine compatibility with the new Mac Pro.
  • tviceman - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    Impressive iGPU performance, but I knew Intel was absolutely full of sh!t when claiming equal to or better than GT 650m performance. Not really even close, typically behind by 30-50% across the board.
  • Krysto - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    When isn't Intel full of shit? Always take what the improvements they claim and cut it in half, and you'll be a lot closer to reality.
  • xtc-604 - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link

    Lol...you think that's bad? Look at Apple's claims. "over 200 new improvements in Mountain Lion"
  • piroroadkill - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    sh<exclamation point>t? What are we? 9?

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