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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xTRICKYxx - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
AMD's target market has been at a considerably lower price platform than Intel's Ultrabook.zdw - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
6 PCIe 2.0 lanes is probably the minimum possible for a MacBook Air, as ThunderBolt + WiFi would take up a 4x and 1x respectively.risa2000 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
So, if I minimize task manager into tray, which updates, let's say, every second, does it mean I will wake up the GPU and save and restore the buffer into display's DRAM every second just for this update? What would be the impact on battery life?(If there is a tray on Win 8, as of which I am not sure right now.)
tential - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
There is a tray.A5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
It would wake up the GPU whenever something that is on-screen changes. Once per second is still much better than 60 times per second.Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
It can remain in sleep state for most of that second so it won't impact the battery much, particularly with Haswell.mikk - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
Why is there no memory configuration detail in the test? This is tremendously important especially for integrated GPU tests. Because we don't know this all gaming tests are completely useless. Bad job.Homeles - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
You've completely missed the point of this review.mikk - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
I think you did.Egg - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
I'm assuming they're comparable between the Acer S7s. But I could be wrong.