The Intel Haswell Refresh Review: Core i7-4790, i5-4690 and i3-4360 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 11, 2014 3:01 AM ESTGaming on Integrated Graphics
For our integrated graphics testing, we use most of the same gaming tests as our discrete gaming range, but at a lower resolution and quality settings (1280x1024, Low) in order to find a reasonable frame rate. Results are given in terms of average and minimum FPS reported. Each of the three CPUs in our test use GT2 / HD 4600 graphics and the same frequencies, meaning that the only difference is clock speeds and threads available. As a result, this should show us how relevant more cores and more threads are for Intel IGP gaming.
F1 2013
The HD 4600 at 1200 MHz falls just short of 60 FPS average on F1 2013, and moving up from the i3 seems to offer a 6% increase in minimum frame rates.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite seems memory bound a little, given how good Iris Pro is compared to the HD 4600 scores. There is almost a 10% jump from i3 to i5 here on average FPS and almost 20% in minimum FPS.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider with discrete GPUs is characteristally CPU agnostic, however moving from an i3 to an i5 gives and extra 5.5 FPS on average in our test.
Sleeping Dogs
Company of Heroes 2
No IGP solution is that well prepared for COH2, although some AMD CPUs and Iris Pro do hit above 20 FPS. We may have to wait another generation to make it more playable and hit 30 FPS at our resolution settings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
130 Comments
View All Comments
ilkhan - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
With 9-series, Intel is enabling Rapid Storage Technology 13, allowing UEFI support, RADI 0/1/5/10Think you meant RAID.
Ian Cutress - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Interesting, I remember correcting that a couple of days ago in an edit. Might not have saved. Updated :)ahar - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
I await your correction in the conclusion with bated breath. ;)Bugfree - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Reading the conclusions I agree that Intel is somehow underperforming, since...well...they can. No real challengers or competition from AMD at this point. I really hope this changes soon...schizoide - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Exactly. Intel doesn't _need_ to release anything. They essentially have no competitors at the high-end space. AMD's CPUs can't even compete with the i3.nandnandnand - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
It would take a miracle to inject competition into the CPU market: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1322247Jaaap - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
We need that miracle.This "Haswell Refresh" is total nonsense. It is just shuffling a bit with names and frequencies.
Where is the looooong overdue desktop quadcore with Iris Pro?
ReaM - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
"AMD's CPUs can't even compete with the i3"I think you've read some other article, because A8-7600 destroys the equally priced i3 in most tests.
The gaming benchmarks are skewed towards intel in this review because they've used 1280x1084 resolution on most gaming tests. Many of the games don't run well on full HD and intel.
John3000 - Saturday, November 28, 2015 - link
AMD CPU's like fx 8350 are beaten in some game by i3 by a very small margin but in most they are close to Core i5 and in many AAA Game are near to core i7 in performance.shorne21592159 - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
i have just changed to using amd apus after many years using intel chips .im really enjoying amd and what they are doing at the moment with lot of hope for the future and although not as fast as intels at moment they do the job at the moment well for me ,plus i seem to be able to overclock amd chips much more than an intel with less problems for some reason