Intel Haswell Low Power CPU Review: Core i3-4130T, i5-4570S and i7-4790S Tested
by Ian Cutress on December 11, 2014 10:00 AM ESTHaswell Low Power CPU Conclusion
There is a clear demand for lower powered everything, as long as the performance is still there. We saw this with the MSI B85M ECO motherboard we reviewed recently, whereby as long as it makes financial sense as well it becomes a win-win.
Intel ultimately keeps its binning and testing process secret, but it is the binning process that allows them to keep high yields by a partitioning off defective cores or CPUs that do not conform to the best voltage/frequency curves. Some CPUs will fall into multiple bins, allowing Intel to sell the unit as a model that needs a boost in stock due to consumer demand. This is why some processors can perform as well as others in terms of their voltage/frequency response, but the only way to guarantee a certain level of performance is to buy the exact processor you need.
Today we tested three processors: the i3-4130T, the i5-4570S and the i7-4790S. These tackle three competitive price points on Newegg at $135, $215 and $315. This is the main reason we requested these processors in rather than others, as many S or T models end up as OEM only. The OEM only models sometimes appear for sale depending on the retailer and their own stock levels, or the region, but are not available everywhere. This is a shame, as some real gems (like the i7-4765T) are on Intel's road map.
The S processors command nothing extra over the base cost, in comparison to the premium of the K models. In terms of performance, in single threaded benchmarks (and therefore responsiveness) these CPUs performed the same as their counterparts, and our i7-S CPU was right on the money all the way through. Particularly in our gaming benchmarks, no performance was lost against the bigger models. In mutlithreaded benchmarks, there was a slight performance decrease. This means a Google Octane result down from 33512 with the i7-4790 to 31127 with the i7-4790S, a loss of 7% in exchange for the reduction in TDP, but in our gaming benchmarks the only real deficit afforded by the S/T processors was that in a few circumstances, minimum frames were lower, such as Bioshock Infinite moving from 28.0 FPS on the i3-4360 to 24.5 FPS on the i3-4130T.
With the T processors, the cut is more severe, especially for the i7 models. For our i3 T processor, we are reducing down from a 54W base component to a 35W, similar to the i7 S reductions. As a result, the benchmark numbers, while lower, are comparable to those i3 models with a potential sticker saving of 19W.
Is the power reduction worth the increase in cost? Ultimately the main use for lower power processors is for systems where heat and noise are critical junctures in the design. By using a lower power processor, the heatsink can also be smaller. This means certain office designs and machines destined for communal areas of the home are the main target points, as well as potential servers that end up locked in a room somewhere. Intel's range of lower powered Haswell processors, according to their road maps, is quite substantial, although one downfall for end users is that some of the exciting parts are OEM only.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
76 Comments
View All Comments
eanazag - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
That would directed at Ryan Smith and maybe jarred Walton for the mobile side of the equation. I suspect that the mobile side is unaffected at the moment.The only card that is well supported by all the new features in Omega is the R9 285 (Tonga). The R9 290 and 290X make a decent showing but are missing the 4K virtual resolution support.
chekk - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Based on some other reviews, I was starting to think Anandtech had switched back to separate power consumption idle and load numbers, but here we go again. Please stop.The audience here is enthusiasts and enthusiasts want the complete picture.
DiHydro - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
I agree, if I have a server that is idle most of it's life, I want to know how many watts it is drawing at idle. On the other hand, if it is running 100% 24/7 then I want to see if a higher TDP, better performing CPU will be cost effective over a cheaper lower TDP part that might run a task longer.alacard - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Xbitlabs did an excellent write up on the 4670S and T variants. Idle results for those can be found here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-...Ultimately extremely disappointing results. Intel couldn't even be bothered to do the bare minimun and bin these chips for better perf/watt. Pathetic.
TiGr1982 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Captain Obvious tells us all, that Intel has a very weak competition on the x86 CPU front in all the recent years (I would say, right from the launch of Sandy Bridge LGA1155 almost 4 years ago). So, they make big money "for free" (in a sense that it's an easy money for them) all these years and don't have to bother about such peculiarities as better perf/watt...Khenglish - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
That xbitlabs review is very good and what I would have liked to see done here.Yeah bad results. I was hoping that these new parts meant that intel improved haswell's power efficiency, but in reality they just lowered the TDP.
smilingcrow - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
This feels like almost a completely wasted review, a sort of Seinfeld review; a review about nothing.Most things you can surmise about these S chips as many things scale linearly so it would have been good to have seen a much better focus on power consumption.
The unanswered question is whether these chips use different voltages than the stock chips and also a lack of hard power data; the delta data is not enough.
Also what did you use to load the cores?
It says AVX but what application and is AVX a good example to use as how many applications use it?
I’d like to have seen a focus on different CPU loads to determine the different characteristics of these S chips; INT, FP, AVX.
So rather than the multitude of redundant data that can deduced from scaling of frequency why not something focused and new!
What a wasted opportunity and a poorly thought out review.
theKai007 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Intel announced the Intel IoT Platform, a reference model end-to-end designed to unify ans simplify connectivity and security for the Internet of Things. http://bit.ly/1yCMSnBname99 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Look at the partners.Looks more like a enterprise software "solution" to acquire/store/extract data from than actual hardware or anything of interest to normal folks.
As long as Intel's HW story in that space is Quark, forget it...
xeizo - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Right on spot, I use a 4570S in my Linux home server. But as an enthusiast I did some bclk(couldn't resist it) to 106.4 so that it Turbo:s to 3.83GHz and multithreadsx4 to 3.4GHz ;-) Anyway, it feels very fast running Linux. I couldn't have used a K-processor as I wouldn't be able to resist maximum clock it, no power saving server ...Gaming is done on a 4.8GHz 2600K, it doesn't look like a need to replace it anytime soon. Unless Skylake surprises us all.
Nice job informing about those lower power cpus, saves us time from undervolting and just draws less power from day one.