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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Rogatti - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
GPU Intel.........no thanks !!!!!Kaveri ... where is you !!! ... do not let me down !
A5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Anything based on Steamroller isn't going to be able to touch these battery life numbers.If you don't care about battery life, you can get much better value for your money outside of the ultrabook form factor.
Samus - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
The GPU performance is slowly creeping up to AMD; AMD won't be able to use their GPU as a crutch much longer.Death666Angel - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Just the ridiculously lower price.kyuu - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Yeah, because AMD isn't going to be improving their iGPU tech at all...?nunomoreira10 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
not really, intel currently uses an abnormal 180mm2 of die area on 22nm (hd5000) for the same perfomance and efficiency of an 80mm2 28nm amd gpu.the are trying to go all out, but their gpu tech basically sucks
smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Where'd you see the analysis of how much space HD5000 takes? I haven't seen anything on that. Maybe I just missed it...180mm2 of die area for Haswell ULT total is what's been reported, and AMD's Trinity 4C at 28nm is 246mm2. The number of transistors in each is basically identical. The difference comes in where Intel and AMD spend transistors. I'd wager that AMD spends more transistors in GPU, and Intel spends more in CPU.
To be frank, I don't see how you can assert that Intel's <90mm2 of graphics on an integrated chip has appreciably lower efficiency than any other mobile part on the market. I could be wrong, but I just don't see it as that far off.
smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Never mind. Found Anand's analysis. There's no way that's correct though. If 1/2 of GT3 takes up 87mm2, then full GT3 takes up 174mm2. Haswell 2C ULT is a 184mm2 die. There's no way the GPU takes up 90% of the chip. Over half, sure. but 90% is ridiculously high. Something in the 75-80% range is the absolute highest I'd expect.Homeles - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
A bit disappointed to see the CPU performance largely stand pat compared to Ivy bridge, but it nailed the one major thing that mattered: battery life.GPU performance isn't awfully inspiring either. I suppose that I won't see the performance gains I was hoping for until Broadwell.
Oh well. I suppose Fall IDF isn't too far away.
meacupla - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Well, i7-4500U is clocked 100mhz slower, but haswell IPC is about 10% better, so obviously CPU performance is not going to differ by much.GPU performance for HD5000 is pretty much what was expected from early intel slides. Iris pro is what was touted as performing up to 'more than 2x' performance.