The Haswell Ultrabook Review: Core i7-4500U Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 9, 2013 9:00 AM ESTGPU Performance
With a modest increase in EU hardware (20 EUs up from 16 EUs), the Intel HD 4400 GPU in the Core i7-4500U I’m testing today isn’t tremendously faster compared to the HD 4000 in the i7-3517U. On average I measured a 15% increase in the subset of game tests I was able to run in Taipei, and a 13% increase in performance across our 3DMark tests. The peak theoretical increase in performance we should see here (taking into account EU and frequency differences) is 19%, so it doesn’t look like Haswell is memory bandwidth limited just yet.
If we throw 35W Trinity into the mix, HD 4400 gets closer but it's still far away from 35W Trinity performance:
| GPU Performance Comparison | ||||||
| Metro: LL - Value | Metro: LL - Mainstream | BioShock Infinite - Value | BioShock Infinite - Mainstream | Tomb Raider - Value | Tomb Raider - Mainstream | |
| Core i7-3517U | 15.4 fps | 6.0 fps | 16.4 fps | 7.0 fps | 20.1 fps | 10.2 fps |
| Core i7-4500U | 14.5 fps | 6.5 fps | 17.4 fps | 9.9 fps | 24.6 fps | 12.2 fps |
| A10-4600M | 16.8 fps | 8.0 fps | 25.8 fps | 10.0 fps | 30.1 fps | 12.7 fps |
For light gaming, Intel’s HD 4000 was borderline reasonable. Intel’s HD 4400 takes half a step forward, but it doesn't dramatically change the playability of games that HD 4000 couldn't run well. Personally I’m very interested to see how the 28W Iris 5100 based Haswell ULT part fares later this year.
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broccauley - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link
Were Acer not known for their "Timeline" series of laptops which were known for groundbreaking battery life?smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Apple are claiming dramatically improved battery life.deeps6x - Sunday, July 14, 2013 - link
I just don't get why Intel caved to MS pressure and made touchscreen a requirement for Haswell. Everyone I know who does image editing insists on doing it on a matte screen.Metro was a huge mistake.
Gaah, just too pissed about this to make a coherent comment.
I want haswell with a matte screen and 13 and 15 inch 'ultrabook' size options. I guess manufacturers will just have to invent some new name to call their matte screen ultrabooks. Perhaps just call them 'laptops' and say screw you and your goof ass naming rules Intel.
Xenon14 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
It would be useful to see productivity and multithreaded benchmarks like Excel and Fritz. It'd be nice if you provide a few charts with higher TDP Cpu's so we can see the relative performance differences.Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Wow Anand you delivered! Once again such an in-depth analysis of EVERYTHING relevant to the platform. Nowhere else can I find this information!uditrana - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Except for one thing. How did they change the backlighting in the S7. I am really interested in knowing.n13L5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
yeah, they did a good job doing that on location and before anyone else :Dmeacupla - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
That's great news.Now, I can't wait to see it in surface pro.
B3an - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Yeah Surface Pro with one of these, in a thinner and lighter design (should be possible now) with Windows 8.1 = ultimate device.MrSpadge - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Or the Thinkpad Helix!